2016/03/31

The US is large ...

In general, the same transport methods as in Europe are used in the US. However, the train is rather unpopular; we were joking about a sign saying "please do not collect flowers during the ride" because the train goes so slow. The sign doesn't exist, of course... at least not yet ;)

People rather fly from A to B which causes many small towns to have an airport. For example, Santa Barbara has about 80000 citizens + 1 airport whereas Göttingen has about 125000 citizens + 0 airports and Oldenburg with about 180000 people is even larger ... and has no airport either! But I guess that's due to the larger distances people need to travel to in the US. The shortest distance from LA to NY is about 4000 km which is still longer than the distance Madrid-Moscow (about 3400 km). And the US is just one country and not the EU.

We could view the US as 50 different states, but if we're honest about the cultural differences between Wyoming and Utah, we won't find much. Instead, Colin Woodward (an award winning author and reporter) argues that there are 11 states which exhibit actual cultural differences. He clusters some states together differently (and even cuts some!) and characterizes them by their attitudes towards education, dominant political attitudes etc. For example, California ends up to be part of the "Left Coast" and the "The Far West" - which makes sense since the coastal part is liberal and has a revolutionary spirit (thus, "Left Coast"). Further away from the coast, we enter a partially very conservative area ("The Far West").

Now imagine you basically only have two political parties you can choose if you live between Madrid and Moscow ;) Some people say it's impossible to govern such a large country because it's just too large.