“My friends in the UK complain about travel time and distance to get to relatives houses on holidays when the relative is only 60 miles away. I used to drive 60 miles just to get to work.”
A phrase that I’ve heard that captures the contrast well is:
In the UK, 100 miles is a long distance; In the US, 100 years is a long time
As a Brit, I can’t imagine driving 60 miles to get to work.
When I was a kid, we’d sometimes take a day trip out to the seaside, which was 63 miles away. If we wanted to do this, we’d have to get up super early so we could have enough time there.
For a longer holiday in the Summer, we would occasionally take a trip to a different place a bit further down on the coast, which was an 85 mile journey. We viewed that as being prohibitively far away for a day trip, and I don’t remember ever going there if we weren’t spending at least 4 days there (including the travel days).
It’s insane how relative our perceptions of these things are.
A phrase that I’ve heard that captures the contrast well is:
As a Brit, I can’t imagine driving 60 miles to get to work.
When I was a kid, we’d sometimes take a day trip out to the seaside, which was 63 miles away. If we wanted to do this, we’d have to get up super early so we could have enough time there.
For a longer holiday in the Summer, we would occasionally take a trip to a different place a bit further down on the coast, which was an 85 mile journey. We viewed that as being prohibitively far away for a day trip, and I don’t remember ever going there if we weren’t spending at least 4 days there (including the travel days).
It’s insane how relative our perceptions of these things are.