• Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      Yeah you Aussies get it in a way the Brits just don’t. Your continent is also quite large. Driving from Perth to Sydney is about like the drive from San Francisco to New York. 3 days later you arrive at a different ocean.

      • Cypher@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I met some Brits on a flight back to Aus and they were a bit confused…

        They thought they would be having breakfast at Bondi, bushwalk and picnic in the Blue Mountains then drive down to Melbourne for dinner and back to their hotel in Sydney.

        That’s around 20 hours of driving not including stops.

        They really didn’t comprehend the scale.

        • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          Sometimes I wonder if they do that on purpose just to amuse Americans/Australians/Canadians. “Remember to ask to see things in three corners of the continent in an afternoon and watch them explain how unreasonably gigantic the place is. They seem to love it.”

          On the other hand I did once have to explain to one of my British friends what American TV bumpers meant when they said “nine, eight central.” You don’t tend to think about time zones when your whole country fits in one of them.

  • pseudo@jlai.lu
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    7 months ago

    If I make sure to leave at peak commute time I’m pretty I can do that just for Paris-Marseille.

  • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
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    7 months ago

    IMO the USA doesn’t have that much “space” it just takes awhile to cross. Land utilization is fairly high and much of unused lands needs constant conservation efforts to maintain wildlife.

  • Treczoks@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    On the other hand, when you start from Texline (which I suppose is the starting point of that 13 hour journey) in the northeast of the state, you could easily escape Texas within minutes.

    On the other hand, in Europe you can get through a number of countries in thirteen hours just because we have a working road system.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The United States has one of the best highway systems in the world. Say what you want about our lack of public transportation, but we’re a country built for cars. Vroom, vroom, motherfucker.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
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    7 months ago

    Some people in Daytona Beach can drive 500 miles without even leaving the stadium.

  • rab@lemmy.ca
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    7 months ago

    In northern Canada you could drive that long without even seeing another person lol

  • lipilee@feddit.nl
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    7 months ago

    Bfd. I can drive 13 hours in Germany from the Dutch border and still be stuck in a fucking traffic jam around Frankfurt on highway 3 and never get to my skiing destination in Austria.

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    A lot of you guys sharing pictures of your whole country as a 15 hour drive are missing the point here.

  • spiffy_spaceman@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Can confirm. When we moved back to Colorado from Austin, we drove all day at 55mph (truck was speed limited) which was about 13 hours, and we were still in Texas. It was very disheartening.

    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      We have trains, they’ll just take 2-3x as long.

      And I’m not really exaggerating, to get from SLC to Denver would take 15 hours (and departs at 3:30AM; no other options), vs ~8 hours in a car. Oh, if you want a sleeper car with a bunkbed, that’ll be 2x the cost of a hotel room.

      So yeah, it’s an option, just a really crappy one.