In America size is all that matters

It’s funny how we in Europe think of America as a country where everything is bigger. Then you come to America and the Americans think of Texas as the state where everything is bigger. If that’s true, I want to go to Texas. Because how is that possible?!?! I spend my first weeks in American constantly taking pictures of huge cars, huge buildings, huge people.
I’ve been to a lot of big European cities – London, Barcelona, Rome, Copenhagen - but I’ve never seen building that size-wise were remotely close to the skyscrapers of New York or Chicago. It’s really impressive. Even a city like St. Louis that is not considered a major city in American terms has buildings taller than any European cities I’ve been to.

But I don’t want to focus on buildings. The cars in America are what really impress me. Every American that is not a flaming liberal owns a SUV, truck or at least a minivan. What I don’t get is what Americans need these gigantic cars for. If you have two kids in America, you have to have a minivan, there’s really no other option. When I was 14, I had three younger siblings and my dad really had a hard time finding a car that would fit us all, he never came close to buying a minivan. So we ended up with this Mazda station car (which I destroyed five years later) that had an extra seat in the back facing backwards. It was always funny to see people waving to us when passing us on the highway because one of my younger brothers had been waving to them (not so funny a couple of years later when they learned to flip the bird).

Anyway my point is that in Denmark people who own a SUV, truck or minivan are usually some kind of craftsman or work for a towing or bus company. In America everybody from lawyers to teenage girls drive SUVs. I don’t think they need a lot of room for briefcases or make up. I have a hard time making sense of it. But it scares me to see a 16 year-old girl driving a SUV while texting her friends about the cute guy she almost made out with last night. SUVs and 5 feet nothing teenage girls simply don’t mix if you ask me. I suggest a law concerning this phenomenon.

I guess this is just another area where Europeans and Americans are really different. The differences were made really clear to me when I stayed in Tennessee for a couple of days earlier this year. I talked with a really nice cap driver. He had just been to London and was really surprised that the cars were so small. I tried to explain that it doesn’t really make sense to own a huge and not very fuel efficient SUV when you live in a city with 12 million people and parking is a bitch. I don’t know if he bought my argument or just thought of me as a crazy foreigner, probably the latter.

It’s not that I don’t like big trucks. I actually think they are very cool, which make me wonder if Denmark would be packed with SUVs, had we just had the same low gas prices as in America. But when you pay 8 dollar per gallon it just makes sense to have a car that runs 50 miles per gallon.