Everything Is Bigger

We’d heard the phrase „Everything is bigger in America” plenty of times. We took it as one of those things you hear about the United States before you ever set foot here — the kind you don’t really think to fact-check.

Everything is bigger. And it’s not just a figure of speech.

The first surprise came first thing in the morning: the coffee. It’s a whole different philosophy here. American coffee is long and weak. We were used to espresso – small, strong, and just enough to get us going in the morning. So our first run-in with the Keurig machine and its enormous pods left us a little puzzled. A single pod looked almost as big as a whole cup of coffee back home. And maybe that was our first real brush with the idea we’d keep meeting over the next few days: here, things are bigger.

Our first grocery run. After coffee, we obviously had to fill the fridge. So off we went on our first serious grocery run, to Walmart. Your first time in an American supermarket, when you don’t know where anything is, is an experience all its own. We wandered the aisles like a couple of lost tourists, hunting for one thing and then another, trying to figure out where they might keep the stuff that, in our minds, clearly belonged-somewhere else entirely. In the end, we grabbed what we figured we needed. And here we started noticing the same story again: a lot of products come in much bigger sizes than we’re used to back home. At the register, two more little culture shocks. The cashier was bagging our groceries in plastic bags – about two items per bag. For free. Shock! It felt like we’d stepped back in time. Coming from a Europe where you bring your own tote and pay for every plastic bag, we watched the bag count climb without a care in the world. Then, the surprise on the receipt: the price on the shelf is not the price you pay. Tax gets added only at checkout. So after doing the math in your head around the store, you get to the end and find the total is a little higher than you thought. With all our groceries and our impressive collection of bags, we headed home. And it was only when we started putting things away that we realized just how big the fridge actually was. The jumbo carton of eggs? Fit right in the door, no problem.

And the appliances… When we finally got around to cooking, we discovered the stove. Huge. We felt like we were in an industrial kitchen. Then we wanted to do some laundry. We put both of our clothes in the machine and… they didn’t even cover the bottom of the drum. „If only I’d had one of these back home…” Any mom reading this knows exactly how that sentence ends. The washer and dryer (nobody here hangs laundry out to dry) get a room of their own. Not like back home, crammed into the bathroom, maybe stacked one on top of the other.

Outside, same story. We step out the door and… everything is bigger. The streets are wide, with lots of lanes, the cars are big, and the distances… bigger still. On the map, everything looks relatively close. In reality, you start walking and find out that „just over there” means something completely different than it does back home. And people don’t really walk. You take the car for just about anything. There’s a drive-through for coffee, fast food, the pharmacy, even the bank. The logic seems simple: why get out of the car if you don’t absolutely have to? We, with our European reflexes, keep trying the walking option. It’s just that, in places, the sidewalk feels more decorative than functional.

Our first meal out. Our first meal out in town taught us one more thing about America: the price you see isn’t necessarily the price you pay. The menu gives you a number, then at the end come the tax and the tip – which is basically mandatory here, and 20% seems perfectly normal. And just like that, we rediscovered an old Romanian saying: the sums you do at home never quite add up at the market – especially when the market is in America. The payment system, on the other hand, we loved. The waitress brought us separate checks, each with exactly what we’d ordered, and each one had a QR code. You scan it, pay straight from your phone, and you’re done. No math, no splitting the bill. Each of us paid for exactly what she’d had. Simple and very efficient. After the meal, it started to rain, so we gave up on walking and called a Lyft. The card’s already saved in the app: you order, you hop in, you get home, and boom – paid! And right after: the tip! We’d just learned the lesson at the restaurant, and already we had a chance to practice it again.

Everything Is Bigger

The opinions expressed on this blog are our own and do not reflect the official position of the Fulbright Program, the University of Georgia, or USAMV Bucharest.