My British colleague soon discovered, to his utter horror, that despite the common language and Common Law, nothing about doing daily business in California was close as to what he expected: Social Security, driving license (he quoted to me: "You must drive on the pavement"), bank account, car buying, credit cards, etc... everything was foreign to him about as much as it was to me. Except that, as a non-Anglophone, I kinda expected everything to be different; he didn't at first.

He was definitely not expecting so many - and so profound - differences between the US and the UK and, least of all, to find his own experiences so similar than those of a - gasp - Frenchman.

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.