1. Coffee

First thing first: If you come from a country with a coffee culture, a country in which families sit together 2 times a day to drink some homemade Turkish coffee, you’ll find a cold disappointment in the US. How did one coffee shop (Starbucks) manage to take over the country with that weak, bad tasting thing they call coffee? Of course, it’s still better than the water with the coffee taste they sell at the other places. Luckily, I brought my own coffee from back home, so I’ll be able to avoid Starbucks for the first month.

2. Aestheticism

I love the fact that everyone cares so much about how their lawn looks like. Some US neighborhoods are truly beautiful. What I could see from Chicago, the streets are constantly kept clean and the city pays attention to the details which makes it even more beautiful.

3. Police

Now, in the Balkans, no one really gives a damn about the police. While I did mind that pinch of anarchy up there, the police situation here is usually straight up silly. Whenever someone sees an officer they freeze, put their head down, mumble a greeting and move on. The policemen simply stop their car next to you during evenings to ask if everything is all right and for some weird reason you feel guilty even though you didn't do anything.

4. Prices

I don’t get this one for real. On one hand, you can get a 2 liter Arizona tea for 1$, while on the other you have to sell your kidney to get beddings or a pack of cigarettes. Sometimes you pay to enter a part of the city or use an elevator in the building, but sometimes you have free entrance to sport events with food that you don’t have to pay at all.

5. Everything is far away

That moment when I’m out of milk for my coffee and I know that I have to go for a 30 minutes walk to get it. Furthermore, if I maybe need hangers for my room, the best option would be planning a trip to Chicago to find a big target, so I don’t also have to walk 30 minutes extra for the milk from before.

6. Portions

I will never again question obesity in the US. Restaurants serve you portions for three when you order a meal for yourself and they add half a litter of soda on the side. It is a true miracle that there are skinny people around here.

7. Sugar

All of the sweets are so full of sugar. I’m still convinced that Pop Tarts are simply cubes of sugar disguised in different colors.

8. House parties

I guess these make sense because of the legal drinking age being 21, but you do need some time to get used to them. They’re usually crowded, sweaty and don’t have enough drinks to keep you tipsy, but I guess they’re the part of the US experience. My question is: how do you trust a 16-year-old with a car, but don’t trust a 20-year-old with a bit of liquor?

9. Roll-ons

As far as I saw, the shops around here sell only stick deodorant and no roll-on deodorants. I mean, this is a really small thing, but considering the fact that in my country no one uses stick deodorants anymore, it is kind of strange.

10. Traffic lights

O.K. , first thing: there are traffic lights with 5 lights on them. I don’t understand them at all. Second: Is it possible that ‘red guy is for stand’ and ‘green guy is for walk’ was not good enough for this country. Instead, you have a red hand which starts blinking, but it means you can walk and a white light which shows up for like 3 seconds. Let’s not even mention the dyslectic nightmare traffic lights with the written instructions.

11. Beer

The US beer is really bad and light- end of the story.

12. Drinking culture

And while I’m talking about the beer I have to mention the last little thing that is utterly strange to me. In Balkans, and a big part of Europe, drinking is a part of the culture. Parents would give sips of rakia to their toddlers and when these would almost die from it, they would laugh and say ‘you’ll learn to love it when you grow up’. With that being said, Europeans still choose not to drink all the time and save themselves for the weekends. US kids are usually not too good of the drinkers because of the high drinking age. Nevertheless, they have this drinking culture in which it’s ok and even desirable if you drink like all the time and get wasted 24/7.

Finally, I just begun my US adventure and as much as I would like to think that I’ll remain true to some things I wrote here, I will probably in a year or so find Balkans’ people strange to an extent. Therefore, this was my last piece of resistance probably going to waste.