What are your thoughts on Americans who want to live in Europe?

Europeans also tend to find the large focus on ethnicity or heritage of Americans a bit weird, in Europe it tends to be more about culture, mentality etc.

America is huge and varied, and this helps 'narrow it down.' It can say a lot about a person.

If someone grew up Italian-American in Brooklyn, New York, that says a lot about how they talk, what their values are, what pisses them off, what they eat, what their experiences have been, and even how they see the world. The same goes for someone who grew up German-American in rural western Nebraska.

It might be hard for non-Americans to tell the difference (just as I wouldn't be able to tell a Jute apart from someone from Copenhagen), and when it comes down to it Vinny Spilotro from Brooklyn probably has more in common with Tim Schmidt from Scott's Bluff, Nebraska than he does with Vincenzo Spilotro from Cantanzaro, Italia. But the differences are there just the same, and they help us make sense out of this giant crazy land we live in.

Although if Vinny went to Calabria to find his roots and was actually telling people there that he was just as Italian as they are in every way, shape, and form, he'd probably qualify as a certified dumbass. Most people know damn well the difference between an Italian-American and an Italian Italian, even if they use "Italian" as lazy shorthand (that's a thing we do).

/r/AskEurope Thread Parent