For whatever good it does, I did sort of think about the fact this was an over generalization, when writing this, but it's also absolutely the way I thought abo

For whatever good it does, I did sort of think about the fact this was an over generalization, when writing this, but it's also absolutely the way I thought about it at the time. I do actually remember having a more limited but similar feeling visiting a library in I think Bath, UK which felt similar in quality to the libraries in truly tiny towns growing up in Ohio. It was free, but the services offered and number of books was way worse than I'd expect from a similarly sized US city especially one that seemed sort of well to do. Meanwhile I think a lot of people in the US have a mostly fair impression of Western European countries investing a lot into their public sectors, but for better or worse my very scientific impression is that the US invests a lot more into libraries. I didn't mean to imply that all libraries charge in Europe though. I knew that wasn't true, I just would have assumed before that all libraries in western Europe were free