Cultural differences..

Man, I'm really struggling with that right now when I read the driving 
thread..

I'm in germany. I do not own a car. I do not even own a drivers license. 
(Yeah, I know... I'm a rare thing, even here.) I do own a bike with a 
trailor (chariot, totally the coolest thing I've bought in a long time).
I walk or ride my bike everywhere. If I need to go further than I want 
to walk or ride my bike I take public trans****t and if public trans****t 
can't get me there I ask my brother if he'll be able to take me there 
(IKEA, as an example. I usually ask him at some point and he'll take me 
withing the next month whenever it's most convenient for him).

I have lived completely without car or access to a car (with a driver) 
for years while I was at university. I never felt like I was stranded 
and unable to do my grocery shopping, or whatever. Sure, sometimes I 
would think "Man, it would sure be cool to have a car and just up and go 
somewhere right now." but it was never something I couldn't live without.
That said, I never lived really out in the country, well, I did, but I 
was working at a butcher and the next grocery store was about a 30 min 
bike ride away (up hill there, down hill back, thank heaven.) so I 
wasn't going to starve or anything, but getting to the next city was 
challenging, there was a bus that went down every two hours except 
during peak times when it was going "every hour" (basically, one extra 
bus). But when I lived there I did have access to a car (my boyfriend 
and his brother), so it wasn't a huge issue.

Anyway: is it so different in the states? Is there really so much 
"outback" where you get stranded without a car because you can simply 
not get groceries without a car because you can absolutely not get to 
work without a car? I mean, I look at the maps and I think "Well, looks 
just like here really." but you know, that's a map and I'm not actually 
there to do the walking around.

So, what I'm trying to say is, not driving a car for a day isn't an 
issue for me. It's nothing that makes my life complicated or boring or 
whatever, in fact, most days I don't ride in a car.
Is it really totally different in the states? Do you take your car for 
every trip you have to make, even if it only takes 20 minutes to walk
there?

cu
nicole