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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thunderfoot" data-source="post: 4188675" data-attributes="member: 34175">Ok, enough commenting on others post, let me drop some of my own.  What is really interesting is that you describe the public transportation systems and ask why they aren't better developed.  I would agree except that distance between some of our cities is larger than all of Europe combined.  As someone that grew up in the middle of nowhere, a walk to the store was a 15 mile trip.  The entire time I spent in Europe, I was never 15 miles from anywhere unless you count the times I was hiking in the Alps and even that was probably not true.Living in Augsburg, I could catch the 'StraBe' to the hauptbahnhof and then ride the train to anywhere and possibly use an U-bahn if it was available, even if I were to go to a small town outside of a large city.  In the town I grew up in, there are no rails, no buses, no taxis, heck in some places the roads aren't even paved. The nearest 'city was a 15 minute drive away and the nearest airport is 2 and a half hours in St Louis Missouri (that's a whole 'nother state over.)  I hate to bring this up, especially with you being German and please understand this is only because its a historical reference, but during WW II we had a POW camp for Nazi prisoners just outside of my hometown.  The reason was because the prisoners were flown or shipped to New York, put on a train for 3 days to get to the midwest, put on a truck for 3 days and dropped in the middle of nowhere with the sole purpose of demoralizing them because even if they escaped, there was nowhere for them to go. (Again, I apologize for the example, but it does clearly illustrate my point.)  Unlike Europe, there are still largely open areas of undeveloped land in the middle, and while the coasts may say Green is Good and Gas is bad, tell that to someone that has to drive 45 minutes to pick up a major appliance or 20 minutes to go to the grocery store; cars aren't a luxury they are a necessity.As for the trains honking when passing though a town, you'll probably find that there is a crossing within 1/4 mile of your location.  It is US transportation law that interstate rail transportation honk to warn pedestrians and vehicles within 1/4 mile of a crossing - when you are passing through towns, that's fairly often.  Also, small intracity trains honk too, but their warning distance vary by city, even subways honk when approaching platforms in some cities.Your swimming story cracks me up, as an American who was in Europe I was always trying to figure out how many Kilometers was in a mile (Roughly 3.3 by the way) so you had quite a workout if you went 1 mile. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />The flags vary by state too - In Maryland you have to have the ground surveyed 24 hours prior to the dig after which they place flags that stay up during the duration of the construction and then are moved.  It might be that this is the case (new or scheduled construction on the horizon) in Columbus, but having never lived there, I wouldn't be able to confirm this.BTW Lyndon LaRouche is a nut job.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I always thought it was weird that Europeans said ground floor then first floor, I mean, the ground floor IS the first floor.  Hmmm?   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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