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| Porthos |
Europeans' familiarity with American cities and locationsIt seems that we as a country are the center of everyone's attention. So much so, that most American feel that they don't have to learn anything about the world outside our borders, as if we are the world. Naturally then, Europeans seem to know a lot more about America and us, than we do about them.So, I was wondering. How familiar is the average European with American geography and the location of major cities, or the geographical position of certain states like California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois? To what extent do they know about the climatic and cultural variations between different regions in the U.S., like the West Coast, the South, the Midwest, etc.? And how familiar are they with major American cities, other than the most famous ones like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles? Do they know where less famous cities like San Diego, Seattle, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Houston are? Most Americans couldn't name more than one major city in most European countries. The only major British city the average American adult can name is London. The average American's familiarity with major cities in Germany is limited to Berlin, if that. And you're lucky to find an American off the street that can name cities like Bonn, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart, or much less identify where in the country they're located approximately. |
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| Josh Lalonde |
I'd like to add Canada to the topic, if you don't mind, Porthos. How many provinces can you name, for example? (No cheating!) | ||||||||
| Porthos |
Well, fortunately for me, I do happen to know a little geography. How very un-American of me. 
Off the top of my head, Canadian cities that I can think of are Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and Toronto. And off the top of my head, provinces I know are are BC, Alberta, Yukon, Newfoundland, Ontario, and Quebec. And I can think of one province in Central Canada that sounds like the Indian woman, Sacajawea. And there are some other ones that are named after native peoples. But, those are the only ones I can name, because like most Americans, I don't really give any thought to Canada. Sometimes I forget it's even there! 
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| Lazar |
I memorized all the provinces a few years ago, when I started to become obsessed with maps. You've got Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan (haha, Porthos), Alberta, and British Columbia, plus Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Some cities that I know off the top of my head are Halifax, Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Windsor, Edmonton, and Vancouver. I think it's a pity that Americans aren't more familiar with Canada. | ||||||||
| Deborah |
Don't forget Winnipeg. Oh, and Calgary (home of the ???? winter olympics). | ||||||||
| Josh Lalonde |
I was hoping to get more European input, but that's OK. There was this segment called "Talking to Americans" on a show here called This Hour Has 22 Minutes a few years ago, where they would go through the US and ask people their opinion on all kinds of ridiculous questions meant to show their ignorance of Canada (like our Parliament buildings being an ice-sculpture version of the White House). Obviously it was heavily edited, by I was just wondering how much the average American knows about Canada. That said, there was a bit of a scandal a few weeks ago when some think tank released a study showing that only about 40% of Canadians could pass the citizenship test they give to immigrants, so maybe Americans know as much about Canada as Canadians do! (I'm proud to say that I got perfect on the test.) | ||||||||
| Benjamin [inactive] |
Re: Europeans' familiarity with American cities and location
Not a lot, in all honesty. I think people usually have some vague idea about where New York, California, Texas and Florida are, but that's about as far as it goes. Probably most Europeans would not be able to tell you where Pennsylvania and Illinois are.
Not very familiar at all.
New Orleans is different for obvious reasons, but I suspect that few Europeans could have told you where it is before Hurricane Katrina. I'd imagine that people have usually heard of at least some of San Diego, Seattle, Philadelphia and Houston, but would not really have much idea about where they are or what they're like. You're right that the whole of Europe is essentially obsessed with America, but that doesn't mean that we really know very much about it. However, I wouldn't say that the United States is the centre of attention for most Europeans though. |
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| Porthos |
Ironically, I think most Americans are probably more familiar with a greater number of cities and their locations in Europe than in Mexico, or even Canada, except for those who live closer to Canada in the northern parts of the U.S. I asked white people at work today to name as many cities as they knew in Mexico, and the most people could name were 4 cities. They knew the capital (Mexico City), and three major U.S. tourist destinations - Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, and Acapulco.
But a suprising number of people I meet don't know that Britain is an island. Very few people here know where Iraq is on the map, even though we're in the middle of a war there. Afghanistan? Forget about it. (And people wonder how politicians like Bush are able to pull fast ones over the American people ).
About half of American teenagers I talk to often think of Paris as a country. About 1/4 of teenagers I meet can't name all the continents. Most people here tend to think of and speak of the African continent as if it were one political entity, or one country. I don't think anymore than 5% of the population here could name more than 3 countries in Africa, much less tell you where in Africa they're located. When it comes to Asia, Latin America, and Africa, Americans' geographical knowledge is appalling. Asking people to name more than a few countries in Eastern Europe, their locations, and/or their capitals is a joke. Most Americans just think of Eastern Europe as one entity, "behind the Iron Curtain". I can name the capitals of all the East Asian, European, North and South American, and Australasian countries, and usually along with at least two major cities. And I have a vivid picture of the globe in my mind, because I've had a globe in my bedroom for as long as I can remember, and I've always taken to looking at it since early childhood. But I'm a rare exception here, especially among my age group. I haven't however, memorized all of the capitals in the Middle East and Africa, nor can I name a lot major cities in these regions, probably because they're so poor and underdeveloped, and sorry to say, but politically insignifcant countries (the latter only applying to sub-saharan Africa). In the Middle East for instance, the only capitals I can name off the top of my head are Tehran, Baghdad, Kabul, Riyadh, Islamabad, Jerusalem, Damascus, Kuwait City, and Beirut. I don't know the capitals of a lot of the Central Asian states or the tiny countries on the Arabian peninsula, other than Kuwait of course because of the Persian Gulf War.
That's surprising. I thought Europeans were a lot more familiar with U.S. geography. |
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| fab |
I think that most European know the names of many American cities and states because they have heared or saw them in American movies. But knowing where they really are is a different question. I think it really depends of each person and its cultural level and/or his interest for the question.
I'm often shocked to ear some people thinking that NewYork is the American capital. This is due to the fact that it is the biggest and most known city - and in general in Europe the biggest city is the capital. Most European would know where is about California - and that cities like LA, San Francisco and San Diego are in California (we also associate Spanish sounding names with it). This state is known to be in southern US because the image we have of it is full of palm-trees and sunny beaches. the smaller cities and medium and small less known states would be not known. Most of the time we have heard the name but not able tosay where it is (such as Oklahoma, Montana, etc) the people who have been to US or have an interest in geography as I am have usually a bertter knowledge of the US. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Josh, voici les provinces que je peux citer de tête (sans tricher  ) : Québec, Ontario, Nouveau-Brunswick, Nouvelle-Écosse, Terre-Neuve, Île-du-Prince-Édouard, Manitoba, Saskatchéouane, Colombie-Britannique, Alberta, Territoires-du-Nord, Nounavout, Youkon. J'en oublie sûrement. Mais pas l'Acadie, une ancienne province qui jamais canadienne ne fut.
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| fab |
Greg, tu les as toutes je pense !
I don't think I would be able to know all the American states. I will try to say all the ones I think of: California, New-York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Oregon, Texas, Washington, Nevada, Montana, Utah, North Dakota, south Dakota, Florida, Alaska, Hawai, New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, Maine, Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina, south Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Georgia, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Minessotta, Michigan, Vermont, Whashington DC, Colorado, Missouri, Massashussetts... I forget some I think ! concerning the European cities I think that most Americans would know the main capitals ? but how it is for the smaller cities ? For exemple, what french cities outside of Paris are widely known in your respective country (and by yourself) would you be able to quote the french cities that you think are the biggest (an the ones you know) ? What about the different regions names ? |
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| Elaine |
Off the top of my head... Cities: Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Nantes, Toulouse, Montpellier, Nancy, Nice, Nîmes, Grenoble, Brest, Calais, Lille, Bordeaux, Dijon, Tours, Orléans, Avignon, Poitiers... ?? Regions: Ile-de-France, Centre, Burgundy, Brittany, Upper Normandy, Lower Normandy, Picardy, North Calais, Lorraine, Alsace, Franche-Comte, Auvergne, Limousin, Rhone-Alps, PACA, Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrenees, Aquitaine, Pays-de-la-Loire, Corsica... ?? |
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| Deborah |
Even though much of California is at the same latitude range as much of the southern US (the southernmost border is at about the same latitude as Charleston, South Carolina), the northern border is at about the same latitude as Boston, which is in New England. FYI, despite the southerly latitude of much of California, here in the US, we don't refer to anything west of Texas as the South or even the southern US. There's the Southwest and the Pacific Coast.
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but I can think of Lyons (which I think is either the 2nd or 3rd largest city), Nantes, Bordeaux, Chartres, Marseilles, Nice, Cannes, Nancy, Nimes, Orleans, Arles, Toulouse, Toulon, Calais, Le Havre, Amiens, Rouen, Avignon, Perpignan, Grenoble.
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| Deborah |
Oh, Corse -- of course! (I just got that from Elaine's post.) So there are 2 parts to Normandie, eh? And I think "Rousillon" should be "Roussillon". | ||||||||
| Porthos |
For all intents and purposes, it is the capital. It's the financial, and cultural capital of the country, and the most populous city, so it's easy to see why so many would mistake it for being the capital. The political capital is in Washington (itself an artificially constructed city), but a lot of power politics which determine the route of economic and foreign policy in this country take place behind closed doors in boardrooms on Wall Street anyway, so one could say that New York is the capital in all but name only.
I'm afraid not. Indeed, Deborah, Elaine, and I are very rare exceptions to the general rule. I would say that only about half of American teenagers could name two capital cities in Europe, and those would probably be Paris and London. About half of adults here could probably name London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Rome, and perhaps Madrid. But capitals like Warsaw, Vienna, Brussels, Bern, Athens, Stockholm, Budapest, Amsterdam, and Lisbon would most likely not be named. It's very scary. |
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| greg in noord-frankrijk |
Mmmh, voyons... Rhode Island (Providence), Indiana (Indianapolis), Idaho (Boise). |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
I'm not sure if you just wanted Americans to answer this, but I think that most people here would know Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Toulouse, Calais and Boulogne, and possibly also places like Dunkerque, Cherbourg, Saint-Malo, Brest, Bayeux, Caen, Cannes, Lille etc. I also know Clermont-Ferrand, Vichy, Riom, La Rochelle, Villefranche, Adjaccio, Toulon, um... there's probably a lot of other places I'd recognise as being in France if I heard them.
Largest cities — Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Lille...
Seems to be of limited importance here — apart from Brittany (Bretagne), Normandy (Normandie) and Provence. |
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| Irrintzi |
Not really... 
The Europeans aren't more intelligent than others... Even, French themselves don't know the name of all French regions and big cities or European countries... Why those of United States? Personnally I know quite well different American states' names but I couldn't place them in a map... There are good geographic games such as, World http://www.maps.com/games/alienz.html USA http://www6.jeux.com/jeux/jeux.php?VIDJeux=3319 USA & Canada http://www.maps.com/games/quiz-anglo.html Latin Americahttp://www.maps.com/games/quiz-latin.html Russia and the near abroadhttp://www.maps.com/games/quiz-russia.html North Africa and Middle East http://www6.jeux.com/jeux/jeux.php?VIDJeux=2529 Europe http://www.maps.com/games/quiz-eur.html Asia http://www.maps.com/games/quiz-asia.html Africa http://www.maps.com/games/africa.html Quiz http://dd.maps.com/comp/comp.html |
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| fab |
deborah, it is curious you said Chartres, since it is a very small city compared to the others, which a lot of french people would be not able to know where it is ! Maybe you visited it, and its famous cathedral.
Benjamin, it is interesting you noticed Calais. I think this city is really overestimated in the English imaginary to be the first city they meet when they go in the continent. it is interestin also you thought to Bayeux... I always had the impression when I asked that question that Normandy almost always come to mind to most English-speakers. This is interesting because for an average french person Normandy is probably not the first region we thing of, excepted if we come from there. I think the exposure of Normandy have been much more important in UK and USA than in France itself due to WW2, and, in the case of UK to the myth of William the conquerant. most of you have good ideas of the 5 main cities which are, in the order: Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Toulouse, Nice In taking in count the agglomeration Lyon would be 2nd. |
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| Deborah |
You're right. But even if I hadn't visited it, I would have remembered it from the pictures in my French textbooks.
...which is why I remembered it.
Yep. I should have remembered Cherbourg, because of having seen "Les parapluies de Cherbourg"; I suppose I forgot about it because I thought the movie was so forgettable. |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
Normandy is also a very popular place for English people to go on holiday to. I'd imagine that most English (especially Southern English) people have probably been to France at least once. Other than Paris, the most popular places in France for English people to visit would almost certainly be Brittany and Normandy — partly because it's so near. Day-trips to Calais, Boulogne and Dunkerque are very popular as well (partly because of cheaper alcohol). Bayeux is famous because of the Bayeux Tapestry — which may be more famous in England than in France, I don't know. |
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| Uriel |
I was going to say the Bayeux Tapestry, too, but then I was an art major and you can't get through art history without going through a lotta, LOTTA French art! (in European Art 1800-1850 I even had to learn far more about the French Revolution than I ever wanted to....)
The Chartres cathedral is famous, of course. I remember the Rouen cathedral from Monet's many, many paintings of it. (Did a lot of haystacks, too, as I recall. And some picture of a pond....). Sat through a lot of Cezanne landscapes and Van Gogh's little period in Provence. Couldn't tell you where most of these places are on a map, but I can picture them. Le Corbusier, Courbet, Gaughin, Manet, Monet and The Death of Marat by David (not to mention The Oath of the Horatii), Fragonard and the fussy little rococo style, Ingres, the Tres Riches Heures du Duc du Bery illuminated manuscript (with that incredible lapis lazuli blue -- one of the most expensive pigments of the day), Toulouse-Lautrec and his posters. In the UK I can name a few places like London, Canterbury, Cambridge, York, Manchester, Bristol, Brighton, Salisbury, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Londonderry, various things that end in sex, and bore you with a 20-minute slide presentation on John Constable and why he tried like hell to get into the British art academy (tons of kids & a dead wife), his unfortunate unpopularity, and some nice scenes of cathedrals and wagons. There;s a Lake District, some Pennines, a Salisbury plain, Yorkshire, Lancashire -- well, really almost as many shires as sexes -- and according to Watership Down, that's really what you'd call a hill. Strange. Turner, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Lindisfarne Bible, and the Book of Kells. Germany -- well, that's cheating; I was born there. I can name a few towns.  Did a paper on Phillip Otto Runge once, comparing his paintings to William Blake's. Loved Albrecht Durer, especially his Hare (he mixed honey with his paint to get the fur right), his Great Piece of Turf, and his woodcuts of Death.
Scandinavia -- well, you got Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Uppsala (what a fun name!), and Helsinki. After that -- not much. I liked the Gnome book. Nice runework and fjords, too. And the reindeer are cool. There is some famous Danish or Swedish watercolorist of domestic scenes that my parents had prints of; his name escapes me now. I think it may have started with Peter. Italy -- Naples, Rome, Florence, Verona, Venice, some regions like Lombardy and Liguria and Tuscany, the Apennines, and Sicily. Known for good food, hot fashions, and horrible driving, even here. The heart of the Renaissance and the rise of the middle and merchant classes, the warring city-states, the Borgias, the Medicis, Leonardo da Vinci, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, Michelangelo Buonnaroti (I'm probably butchering his last name) and his pissiness toward the pope employing him as a painter (say that three times fast), Raphael, Botticelli, Titian, Fra Lippo Lippi, Fra Angelico (and Frangelico, for that matter -- very tasty!) -- Roman frescos, the invention of the drill and its subsequent impact of marble statuary -- oh, and my parents used to have some very nice Etruscan statues. Well, reproductions, anyway. Behind the Iron Curtain, as Porthos puts it (god I miss how easy geography was when I was a kid!): Budapest, Sofia, Tirana, Warsaw, Gdansk, Prague, Vilnius, Sarajevo, Yalta, Leningrad (damn, they renamed it, didn't they?), Kiev, Moscow, Chernobyl, Vladivostok, Tashkent, regions like Transylvania, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Siberia, the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Danube, the Lena and the Volga Rivers. Beautiful ikons, lots of gilding, Russian miniatures, pysanky, and onion domes. The Low Countries -- Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Lichtenstein, Gelderland, the Brabant (Sander!), Brugge, Luxembourg. Need I mention Peter Breughel, Hieronymous Bosch, Van Gogh (nice museum), Rembrandt van Rijn and his beloved Saskia and Hendrickje (The Night Watch is enormous in person! and it's been cut down from the original!), the Rijksmuseum, and the Flemish School? Iberia -- Madrid, Salamanca, Granada and the Alhambra, Andorra, Lisbon, Oporto, Catalunya, Andalusia, the Algarve, Galicia, azulejo tilework, El Greco, Velazquez, Goya and his Caprichos, Picasso, Dali, and the Prado. Greece -- oh hell, no. I'm going to have nightmares about black and red figure pottery, kouros statues, Minoan bull dancers, and the influence of Egyptian art styles on early Hellenic art! Then there are the dinky countries -- San Marino, Monaco, Andorra again, Vatican City, and Malta. I remember most of this from childhood, by the way, Porthos...and I moved to the US at the tender age of five! So there goes your theory....
O Canada -- I made it a point once to learn all of the provinces, Josh; let's see if I still got it (without cracking the atlas): Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, The Yukon, the Northwest Territory, and Nunavut. Oh, and the Calgary Stampede is the biggest rodeo in North America -- and they call us cowboys! Don't know any Canadian artists, though. Not one. Mexico -- well, I do a lot worse: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, DF, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Nuevo Leon. There are a bunch more, but I don't know them. The Yucatan Peninsula. Tijuana, Ojo Caliente, Puerto Penasco, Cd. Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Palomas, Guanajuato, Guadalajara, Mexico City, Tenochtitlan, Acapulco, Mazatlan, Cancun, and of course the name that captivated the main character of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption -- Zihuatanejo. Copper Canyon is a popular tourist destination here. Only artists I know from Mexico are the two biggies -- Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, neither of which I'm terribly fond of. I do like the Dia de los Muertos figures and the papel picado; we have those here, too. |
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| KSa |
I think in Poland people know a lot about the USA. For example, when I was a kid my brother and I used to play a game we named "Name the state". It was about wording a name of a state alternately. Who couldn't name a state for more than 30 seconds - lost.
I remember that naming first 25-30 states was fairly easy (it didn't take us more than 5 seconds) and than problems started. I think, however, that we usually ended up the game before 40-45 states were named (30 seconds pour reflechir helped a lot). It was not bad taking into account we were 10-12 years old
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| KSa |
Uriel,
New Mexico is almost the same size as Poland. I know it because once I decided to find the states in the US similar in size to my country. But honestly, without looking up in a Wikipedia, or any other external source, I can name but three cities/towns: Albuquerke, Santa Fe and (thanks to you) Las Cruces. |
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| Loic |
Well, as I've always said, we are simply not a very representative sample of our countrymen, are we? I am quite surprised, for instance, the number of people who are intimiately familiar with the geography of Europe and America. I thought I was a self-appointed authority, thanks to years of following Championship football.
Thanks to football, I think many (male) Singaporeans would be able to name you the cities of England, Spain and Italy. Even a git would know that Rome is in Lazio (why else is it a derby when AS Roma play Lazio?) or that Zaragoza is in the Castille region (Castillian-Spanish clubs include, amongst others, Real Zaragoza, Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid). We would also be aware of the Basque clubs such as Atletico Bilbao and Real Sociedade although we might not have the faintest notion of what a Basque is. We are apprised of the Catalan status of Barcelona and that the intense rivalry between the Catalans and the Castilians is best exemplified by El Clasico -viz Real Madrid playing Barca at either the San Bernabeu or the Nou Camp. We know that Lisbon is the capital of Portugal, thanks to Sporting Lisbon. We have a vague notion of Porto both as the name of a football club and a city. Porto was the shock winner of the Champions League in 2004 when Jose Mourinho guided the unfancied Portuguese team over Didier Deschamp's AS Monaco. Not many of us would know much about the English counties, though. I can only name you English cricket counties like Lancashire, Yorkshire, Glamorgan, Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, etc. As for English cities, I honestly feel that even my army driver who finished school with an O level cert can yak about English cities non stop, if given half a chance. There is London of course, home to Arsenal, Fulham, Preston North End, Chelsea, West Ham, Tottenham Hotspurs. There is Southampton which has since been relegated from the Premier League. There is Ipswich, of course. Manchester obviously features prominently on our soccer radar, no thanks to Man U and the less illustrious city rival, Manchester City. Then there is Liverpool whose inhabitants are known as either Merseysiders or Scousers and where its inhabitants are divided in their loyalties to either Liverpool FC or the slightly older but much less successful Everton. There is Birmingham, of course. Birmingham FC players wear light blue jerseys that are confusingly similar to Man City's. Aston Villa also call Birmingham home and while not being a very successful outfit, they have a very distinguished supporter in Prince Williams. Moving on to Lancashire, we have Blackburn, home to Blackburn Rovers. American soccer fans would probably be familiar with this club. Their compatriot Brad Friedel plys his trade as goalkeeper there. To me, I know Blackburn more for their mercurial Norwegein midfielder Morten Gamst Pedersen. Newcastle has to be the biggest northern English city we know, no thanks to the Magpies (Newcastle FC) and former England international and ex Magpies captain, Alan Shearer. Don't remind us of the days when Jean-Alain Boumsong and Titus Bramble form the 'backbone' of the defence. The error-prone duo kept us Arsenal fans laughing hilariously whenever we play against the Geordies. We know that slightly south of Newcastle is Sunderland whose football club used to represent a sort of derby whenever Sunderland play Newcastle. Now that Sunderland have been relegated, this leaves Newcastle as the lone north English representative in top-flight English football. I think I am being rather fair in my assessment here. This is what any male football fan would know about European geography. |
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| David |
I read in a book called "Don't Know Much About Geography" which said that 40% of all the kids in Texas don't know what country lies directly below them. 
This is really pathetic. I can easily name every country in Europe, at least 50 in Africa, and most of the countries in Asia. |
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| fab |
for most french people it is not really a holiday destination, not really attractive, Normandy has the reputation for being always cool and rainny. Said that I recognise that it has some interesting historic places, but not more than other regions. it is strange that Normandy would be a popular destination for English people, since it is the least exotic place an Englishman would found in France, due to the localisation on English channel, the nordic influence and the common Anglo-Normand influences on architecture. on landscape the similarities are noticable too; the Normand bocage is a landscape that could be more familiar to english people than openfield landscapes typical to most of France.
Maybe, but it still be the sea between... and the tunnel is very expensive, so for the average English person I think it is more difficult to go to France than, say, German, Dutch or Italian people. Actually in turistic places we tend to see quite much more tourists from Germany and Netherlands compared to from UK. [/quote] |
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| Benjamin [inactive] |
As I said, it's because it's near. About 60-70% of English people live in Southern England anyway (heck, almost 50% live in the Southeast), so going to that part of France just means driving to somewhere like Dover, Southampton, Portsmouth or Plymouth, getting on the ferry, and then driving to a campsite, usually in Normandy or Brittany. It would probably be faster than driving to Scotland, I'm sure. People don't always go on holiday to go somewhere very different. If I could go anywhere on holiday for free, I'd probably choose to go to Germany over Borneo. Next year, when I'll be living in Scotland, I'll probably go on holiday somewhere in Scotland. Virtually everyone I know in England has been to France, often many times. I've been to France about 10 times and that's nothing unusual, even though I'm only 18. Of course, like most people, my view of what is 'typical' is distorted by factors such as social class. |
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| Uriel |
Well, those are about all the cities we have. They're the three biggest -- and Santa Fe (the smallest of the three) only has about 65,000 people. Other towns people might have heard of are: Roswell -- the "alien landing site"
Clovis -- the prehistoric Clovis culture is named after it, from stone arrowheads found there Truth or Consequences -- 'cause it has a funny name Gallup -- from the old song "Get Your Kicks on Route 66". I grew up on the Depeche Mode version, of course. Nothing better than a quartet of languidly depressed Brits directing you to have a good time on the Mother Road. "You'll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino..." Gdansk, Krakow, and Warsaw are the only Polish cities I can think of. And the only Pole I ever knew anything about was Lech Walesa (he was big when I was little).
No, sounds more like it would be right up their alley! As Benjamin points out, people often want to see what they are already used to when they travel, only slightly translated. I think I remember Fredrik saying that were he to visit the US, he would only be interested in going to Boston or NYC or other eastern cities that had a decidedly "European" feel. |
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| KSa |
Probably you know more without realizing they were Polish: Nicolas Copernicus, Fryderyk Chopin, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, John Paul II... |
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| Porthos |
I almost forgot to mention it. But I sort of met the president of Poland recently. He visited a military base nearby my home, and I got to meet him. We didn't shake hands or anything, but I was really close to him. | ||||||||
| Uriel |
Well, I meant contemporary Poles, but you're right! I remember Madame Curie naming the element she discovered "polonium" in honor of her country. As for Pope John Paul, I think you stop having a specific nationality once you become the head of the Catholic Church! Not sure why I think that, but I do....
As for meeting heads of state, the only one I've ever laid eyes on is Emperor Hirohito, on his birthday (he came out once a year to wave). I also saw Hillary Clinton in person my freshman year of college when she was campaigning for her husband (before he was ever elected); if she ever makes it to the White House (fat chance, I think), that'll make two. |
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| Julian |
Heheh. I've never met a head of state either, unless you'd consider the Governator a head of state. 
And I've rubbed shoulders with Hillary once or twice. 
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| Julian |
A long time ago I was at a bar or some other place in BC and these Canadian girls thought it would be fun to quiz me about all things Canadian, like "What is the capital of Canada?" I didn't have a clue back then, so I ran off a list of Canadian cities that I knew of, but neglected to mention Ottawa. When they asked what part of California I came from and I responded with "Los Angeles", they said, "Figures!" That wasn't very nice so I said something to the effect of "Well, it's not like Canada has given us anything worth remembering. " No offense to the Canadians here. I just felt that a cheap shot deserved a nasty retort.
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| Walker |
It might be Carl Larsson you were thinking of. |
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| Liz |
You might know something about ZsaZsa Gábor.
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| Deborah |
Not to mention Eva Gábor. |
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| Uriel |
Could be. This looks very familiar: 
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