16 ways Europeans are just better at life
 

A tongue-in-cheek article from the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_3950351.html

1. Health Care
2. Cheese
3. Public Transportation
4. Song Contests
5. Life Expectancy
6. Football (Soccer)
7. Vacation time
8. Chocolate
9. Political Scandals
10. Measurements
11. Sexy accents
12. Fuel-efficient cars
13. Nudity in the media
14. Automobile racing
15. Castles
16. Taking their time

Bonus: Movie actors who aged in weird ways

This thread won't end well.

Factual question:

"Meanwhile, this yellow, nondescript foodstuff bears the name "American." says the reference. Is there ANY substance in this, or is it just Arianna's unspeakable snobbery again (talking of whom: tell me about the fabulous ranges of cheese in her native Greece, where it's all white, smells rancid and is just called "turi")

When I was small, cheese was "red" (sort of Cheddar made by a tyre maker), "white (Cheshire and stale) or branded. Now there aren't just hundreds in every store, but even the convenience store at the tatty end of my microtown, catering for the problem families the county has to dump somewhere, sells goat, Camembert, Brie and the rest.

I've probably got more experience of running US food stores than most people here (and certainly more than Kyria Uppity Stassinopoulos). Even in the depths of Ohio and Kentucky, the smallest (and poorest) store sold a wider range of cheese than most Greek, Spanish or Italian food stores. And don't get me started on stores in Romania or Portugal

Do the HuffPlonkers REALLY believe the pseudo-liberal bigotry about the average USAnian their cheerleaders at The Guardian churn out? Is it Europe or America they're pig-ignorant about - or both?

I fear you are right sparkchaser.

Well, Switzerland has excellent cheese. And chocolate. And long vacations. And good health care. And public transportation.

We suck at Eurovision though.

Italy scores on 6,7,9,13 (definitely 13),14, and 16.

flanner -- I'll take my local Berkshire Waitrose against my suburban Seattle grocery store for the cheese alone. You can get great stuff in specialty stores in Seattle but not with your regular, weekly shop from the closest supermarket. At my Safeway cheddar comes in mild or sharp, no gradient levels of mature. Although there is a great variety of sliced or shredded prepackaged stuff, I prefer a variety of the cheese itself, I can do my own slicing! The only cheese I can't seem to find in Englaf in cotija, a Mexican cheese. But the variety of Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola, Roquefort, Stilton and so on makes up for it!

I have been married to two Americans (not at the same time), one southerner, one northerner. Both of them thought that horrid prepackaged sliced stuff was real cheese. They definitely liked real cheese after I introduced them to it, though.

Living as I do in the land of rubber cheese, even our rubber stuff is better than "American". Not sure I'd eat that nasty brown cheese they have in Norway in preference to American though.
As for Tillamook, mentioned in the comments, we'd never heard of it until we visited Tillamook. We weren't impressed.
There are artisan cheeses to be found in the US, just as there are in Europe, and they are worth the effort. Same with beer.

The vacation time, or rather lack thereof, was one consideration when DH was offered a job by NASA. Health care was another. Education was a third with three kids. However it was actually the thought of moving us all again so soon after moving here which stopped the move in the end.

Frankly I think soccer is totally boring and will never begin to replace baseball - which is fascinating.

And in this area we have a ton of public transit.

But they forgot to mention food - and the dining experience. Can get bad there and a lot of good here - but overall - they have a better idea than scarfing down mass quantities of buffet food with max calories, fat and salt.

I think baseball is much more boring than soccer, you would have done better to pick cricket.

You do have plenty of public transport in NYC (although it's way past time the metro got refurbished) but that is in no way repesentative of the situation elsewhere in the US - where most of the population lives.

I need to take a nap after reading a certain post here.

I think soccer and baseball are both boring! Now, rugby on the other hand . . . that's exciting!