> Germany, England, etc., become more like the US every time I visit.
As a German: In what ways?
As a German: In what ways?
2. I recently was in a shopping mall in Stuttgart. The design, parking garage, mall exterior, interior, looked exactly like an American mall. The displays and signs inside were nearly all in English. You could not tell you were in Germany.
3. Germans have by and large quit smoking.
4. English everywhere.
5. More American style clothing. Less Lederhosen (in fact, I can't recall seeing any Lederhosen after 1970).
6. American brand names everywhere.
I'm not sure how long ago you were in the US, but it was ubiquitous here a couple generations ago, and the shift away from smoking seems to be a global trend associated with wealth - in Mainland china, I see much less of the younger generation smoking nowadays.
I was in Berlin recently and can attest to the English signage anecdote though, even if your experience seems to be an exaggerated version of mine.
Smoking largely ended in the US by the mid 70s. Not completely, but in the 1960s I recall every office building stunk of stale smoke. This disappeared by the mid 70s.
Those are just form Bavaria and nowhere else.
You woudn't see a cowboy dress in NYC.
Well, there's the Naked Cowboy. But I guess he's missing the "dress" part of it (aside of "keeping the hat (and boots) on").
Eh? How is stopping smoking a "US thing"? Surely it's a result of public health campaigns and regulations slowly introduced over decades?
USA has double the smoking rate (per capita) than in my country (2017).
Germany was very,very early with anti-tobacco campaigns: “in 1929 (presumably too late to be included in the handbook) the German physician, Fritz Lickint published a paper in which he showed that lung cancer patients were particularly likely to be smokers. He then went on a crusade against smoking, and antitobacco activism actually became widespread in Germany.”
Hollywood was one of the main proponents of marketing cigarettes.
See also the newish American trend of vaping.
America is the forth largest producer of cigarettes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigaret...
https://www.businessinsider.com/sweden-smoking-rate-what-wor...
It was starkly obvious if you traveled back and forth between the US and Germany in the 1980s. In the 80s US businesses had done a good job of pushing the smokers out on the porch.
I never thought that would work, but it did, and smoking became generally recognized as the filthy habit that it was.
My '72 Dodge hasn't seen a cigarette since the 1980s and still smells like smoke :-)
Besides, McDonald's are everywhere in Germany. I even ate at one at Checkpoint Charlie. An obvious triumph over communism :-)
I'm sure there is an IKEA around here somewhere, but I don't know where. I know where all the McD's within 10 miles are!