Mr.Cynic88 said:
I spent some time in Italy, and as an American, living in a town that has a $250 open container ticket law, was amazing that I could buy alcohol from streetcarts and drink it in the middle of the day walking down the street.
Something I noticed about my time in Europe: people drank all day; every restaurant I went to went out of their way to serve us alcohol, but at the same time, I never ran into drunk assholes. In an American city at 1:00 A.M., you can hear the drunk dicks shouting rude things at passing women, but I despite drinking all day, I didn't seem to see this in Rome.
From my impressions, it seems like alcohol in Europe is more ever-present (I was traveling with a Muslim who didn't drink, and the Italian waiters didn't seem to accept that, and brought him alcohol-laced drinks anyways - I would hate to be an addict and have to deal with that while traveling) but at the same time it's far more moderated and mentally healthy. Americans binge-drink, Europeans are more constant and moderate.
I know this forum has both Americans and Europeans, so I would love to hear what you all think about the Alcohol attitudes between the two continents.
The thing is that spending "some time" in a country doesn't really show you much about it. For one your an outsider, and secondly if your visiting your largely going to be around tourist traps and heavily travelled cosmopolitan areas. Even if your military, your time is going to be spent in and around a base, with an area built heavily around outsiders being around. A lot of people like to think travelling let's them know what other places are like, but really it doesn't, as your generally seeing the best foot put forward for the most part with far more attention paid to decorum and law enforcement.
To put things into perspective, if you come into the US as a visitor your likely to wind up in an area surrounded by the tourism and hospitality industry and carefully maintained. Even the people who live in the area are likely employed in some aspect of those businesses. It's sort of like how if you visit the US and wind up down in Florida your going to be in the area around resorts like Disney, Universal, and all kinds of smaller productions. Even if you never visit any of those places all of the shops, bars, resteraunts, etc... are set up for the tour traffic. The people who live there are generally employed by such businesses. When it comes to such superficial businesses you also tend to see a lot of the "beautiful people" or at least slightly ones around, with everyone at least being fairly cleaned and well groomed. Your visitor to the US doesn't generally run into some glades trash drinking hooch out of a dirty Ragu jar, or see trailer parks full of drunks yelling at each other. As someone who LIVES in the USA you of course see all of that because your more out among the general populance. If you were to judge us entirely by the face we put forward for polite visitors and tourists you'd think of the US as being something of a Utopia.
In general some of the biggest mistakes people have ever made when it comes to living arragements have come from people who went on vacation or studied abroad for a few years and decided they wanted to live somewhere they thought was better, only to have reality set in once they got there.
As far as the availability of alcohol and not seeing anyone drunk or nasty, there is an art to managing that at resorts and surrounding areas. I did some of it for the casinos down here in Connecticut when I worked security. At any rate even down here in the "bad" part of the state if you hit the visitor areas like the casinos, Mystic, the beaches, etc... you'll find everything well taken care of, and if your an adult you'll find alcohol being pushed everywhere. SE Connecticut, quaint New England with all this cool stuff around and just the right level of development... who wouldn't want to live here, the people are so nice, clean, and happy. Now head down to Bridgepor and the more developed and lived in parts of the state and you'll see why this is the bad part of Connecticut. Our ghettos and urban blight can compete with the "best". If your not rich and come down here and live like everyone else chances are you won't find it anything special. The same can apparently be said true for most of the developed world when you get past the hype. :/