5 ms·

I am from Europe as well and I can wholeheartedly agree with this. I know it has become so popular to be laughing about the States over here but let me tell yo

• eru 16y ago
  You can be friendly to people in Germany, but most people are rather more introverted than in America. So the common case of somebody being overly outgoing is the salesman. That tends to colour impressions.
• klenwell 16y ago
  If you're meeting Americans abroad, you're generally meeting a special self-selected type of more open-minded American. I tend to find Germans I meet here at home much more enlightened than the majority of Americans I deal with.
• vacri 16y ago
  I spent three months crossing the US and what struck me is how outgoing the Americans are. Back home (Australia) if you're standing at a bus stop, no-one will talk to a stranger unless it's a sardonic comment about how late the bus is. In the US, total strangers just started talking to me apropos of nothing, just to talk and pass the time. I think that this is my favourite aspect of the American character. The stereotype of the American who just wants to hear their own voice didn't hold up either - almost all of them were genuinely interested in conversation, though that may have been partly coloured because I was a foreign tourist a little off the beaten track.