Worldwide Picks: What Non-Americans Love About Life in the USA

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Birthday Bliss in Mystic

First time in the US my brother and I (from Norway) went on a road trip around New England and upstate New York. By chance, we spent our first night in Mystic, CT (a year or so after the movie Mystic Pizza). It was the night of my twenty-third birthday, and we ended up in a small bar full of locals, pretty much the only tourists/out-of-towners in the place. During a trip to the bathroom, my brother had told the bartender it was my birthday, and when I came out, the entire bar was singing Happy Birthday to me, and I was served a giant piece of cheesecake. I was completely taken by surprise, and it was a great experience!

Most Americans are very friendly to strangers in my experience. We had three great weeks in CT, MN, NE, and NY.

To clarify the state abbreviations (I’m leaving them unaltered below), I meant Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and New York. We made it as far north as Ogunquit, ME, ate lobsters almost daily, crashed the car in Salem outside Boston (took down a telephone pole, too), and on our last day, two hookers stole my wallet right outside our hotel in NYC (when someone is literally squeezing your balls, you tend to not notice someone else emptying your pockets). It was an awesome trip, nice to relive it through Reddit, but now I feel like actually repeating it!