I actually like European houses because they have a sense of being of a longer timespan than I am, it reminds me that I'm transient in a much slower changing world.
Seeing the cities change around me faster than I can absorb those changes always weirds me out. In Europe you have that too in areas where there is a lot of construction but it only gets to me with places that I know well. I remember almost driving into a tree when I rounded a corner into Amsterdam one fine weekday morning and saw a - new to me - very large building that had been built during my stay in Canada. Of course for people that had seen it built it arrived very slowly but for me it might as well have popped out of the ground.
So you can imagine what I feel when I'm in North America.
That's an interesting viewpoint that I hadn't really considered before.
Of course, the US as a whole just isn't that old compared to most of Europe. So it's hard for us to have buildings that are 300 or 500 years old - because no one was here that long ago. Not saying our current buildings won't last that long, we just don't know yet. And the idea that they are just going to crumble to the ground one day because they are made of wood seems a bit misguided to me.
Seeing the cities change around me faster than I can absorb those changes always weirds me out. In Europe you have that too in areas where there is a lot of construction but it only gets to me with places that I know well. I remember almost driving into a tree when I rounded a corner into Amsterdam one fine weekday morning and saw a - new to me - very large building that had been built during my stay in Canada. Of course for people that had seen it built it arrived very slowly but for me it might as well have popped out of the ground.
So you can imagine what I feel when I'm in North America.