My former Boss was Texan, from Waco of all places. He was rather dismayed to discover, on his travels, that the roads, and the general infrastructure, of Western European countries was so much better than "back home". He didn't mind the French having nice roads and trains, he just thought he'd been misled about how much better things were in the US?
My Canadian friend's father showed me his central heating system (not a euphemism) because "you don't have this in the UK right?".
I think we need to understand that a vast amount of knowledge about European countries is still based on 1945 knowledge, passed from father to son. I'm surprised that American tourists don't come bearing gifts of chocolate and nylon stockings.
TV does very little to dispel the stereotypes since it's usually period dramas that get shown.
We are fed an almost opposite view of the US. We see only the shiny cities via Cop shows and Law shows, everyone in dapper suits, whereas the area between New York and San Francisco is made up of countless small towns, each with an identikit "strip mall" and where not driving a Dodge RAM pickup is seen as slightly gay. Men's suits are generally appalling.
I lived in Rochester Minnesota, rather white-collar as mid-western towns go. I met many people however who had never left city limits, not even to drive the hour to Minneapolis.
It's the best country in the World, that's a fact. It seems that many are brought up with that sure knowledge.
It's clearly not the case because they only have one sort of light switch. Any country that size with only one sort of light switch (a cream, plasticky, square thing) must be communist.
As for drinking the water, well my experience is that my Minnesotan tap water must have come straight from the local swimming pool.
Possibly many city-dwelling Americans would get quite a shock if they ventured inland. It would be interesting to see this fella's Powerpoint on visiting Tennessee for example.
