There's a definite divide between North America and Europe's sense of scale and size in terms of the people living there. Both sides often seem to run into a sort of geographical culture shock when it comes to realizing the size of the other.

For example, many North Americans talk about culture spread between European countries through immigrant populations. Many North Americans think that you could easily replicate that phenomenon because, if it can happen somewhere else, it can happen here. What those folks don't realize is that North America is significantly less dense as a whole when compared to Europe. Culture and ideas have to travel much further to proliferate here (which is why so many American states and Canadian provinces have unique cultural identities unto themselves.) I'm sure there are plenty of Europeans who have similar misconceptions because they don't realize just how big North America is.

I once had to explain this sort of geographical cultural attrition to somebody by pointing out that Ukraine (the largest nation in Europe, barring Russia, obviously) could fit into any one of the Western Canadian provinces 10 times and still have tons of wiggle room.