r/AskReddit • • 4h ago

"those little differences" Americans who visited Europe, what was surprisingly different for you?

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u/becoolnloveme 4h ago

I spend about three-to-four months a year in Europe. The standard of how a person dresses when going out in public is uniformly higher in basically every European country. Almost everybody is dressed well enough. It shocking to many Europeans how Americans will attend class or go to the store in pajamas. It wouldn’t happen there.

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u/StressOk2675 2h ago

Yeah, a buddy of mine (we're both Dutch) was invited as a guest professor for a semester at a university on the East Coast.

He later told me his biggest culture shock was students attending his lectures in pajama's. And not just his morning lectures, but in the afternoon as well. Not having the decorum of even maturity to put on a simple pair of jeans and t-shirt was baffling to us.

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u/becoolnloveme 2h ago

Yeah exactly—I’m a professor and that’s why the classroom thing stands out to me…