[fr] Quelques étrangetés américaines rencontrées sur mon chemin...
Here are a few of the things I noted regarding my second contact with US culture. I’ll add things to this list during my stay.
- friendly and helpful people (besides the cashier at Walgreen who couldn’t help me use the card payment system and was a tad grumpy)
- wide, wide roads; a normal road like Cornell in Hillsboro is roughly as wide as our motorways; a small residential lane is wide enough to fit 8 cars across it
- big, big cars, to go with the wide, wide roads; they’re not cars, they’re trucks! And yeah, maximum one person per vehicle, please…
- some of the cars (quite a lot) have the orange turn signals lit up permanently (not blinking) instead of off
- in domestic airports, anybody can enter the luggage claim area
- security people have a “we take security seriously here” air about them
- breakfast seems to consist mainly of pastries
- cubicles; saw the real ones, after being introduced to the concept by Dilbert; they’re far worse than I had imagined: huge, huge spaces lined with grey boxes — people must feel very lonely working in them
- default mode of transportation seems to be the car; when I asked where I could get a sewing kit, I was sent about 500m/1km away, but the guy was a bit taken aback when he understood I was on foot, and then claimed it wasn’t walking distance
- many more large and extra-large people here than what I’m used to seeing
- grown-ups wearing caps
- an ATM which charges me $2 to withdraw money
- tap water which tastes of chlorine and frog (I feel like I’m drinking swimming-pool water)
- grid-like roads: very confusing when trying to figure out where I am on a map — all the intersections look the same
- nice food! Indian, Thai, burger, fish-food… yum; I’m definitely not having light meals to help with my jetlag
- at Portland baggage claim, a surprising number of very young mothers (or very well-preserved mothers)
- way too much choice when it comes to medicines
- toilet bowls full of water by default (I thought the first one I encountered was blocked)
- signs telling people to wash their hands!
- bathtubs encountered are wide but really short and shallow
- way too much ice in drinks
- woman next to me on the plane who gave me a rather blank look when I said “Switzerland”
- pedestrian lights in Hillsboro stay green for two seconds and then transform into a big red flashing hand; now what’s the logic behind training people to walk across the road with a big red hand flashing at them? in civilised countries like Switzerland, the light at least stays green long enough to allow you to cross the road while it’s green…
- paying the bill at the restaurant requires engaging in complicated calculations to figure out how much to tip