> I'm just curious...why does eveyone think that England is freezing cold? As the reader poll sems to show, you guys in the states are getting muchos more snow than us...actually, it very rarely snows in Britain apart from in the mountains in Scotland and Wales and probably Ireland. I left the house yesterday in flip flops for crying out loud! My flatmate at Uni (who comes from Pennsylvania) is very confused about this as she was told before she came here that England was an icy freezing place. Cold, yes. Wet, yes. Unpredictable, definately. But freezing cold?

I don't think I've ever gotten the impression from anyone that they thought England was "freezing" cold. This is not to say I'm disagreeing with you about that, but most people I've talked to that have any impression at all have a pretty accurate one.

The thing is, you guys may not have harsh winters, but you don't have warm summers either. It's rainy and/or overcast more often than not. England is famous even here for its fog. What's completely insane is that Scotland is worse. There's a joke over there about how the rain starts the instant you cross the border into Scotland, and when England is one of the soggiest places I've ever been, that's saying something.

When I lived there with my family for two years, we got some (mild) seasonal depression disorder, but not the usual way around. Usually people with seasonal depression get it because they don't get enough sun in the winter. We got it because we didn't get enough snow. After weekend skiing trip to the Alps, suddenly we were in better spirits again.

At any rate, what impressions Americans have of England is probably going to vary rather hugely from place to place. Morris, over in perpetually summer-mild coastal southern California, undoubtedly *would* think England was freezing cold, even if the temperature stayed above 0 Celsius. Residents from Washington State would feel right at home with the rain. Probably there isn't anywhere in this diverse country, though, that stays as chilly as England does through the summer months. Even Maine can get uncomfortably hot in July.

S "loved the weather in Germany, where it snowed like a blizzard, turned cloudlessly sunny, then started a downpour all within the time it took him to walk one mile, from the bus stop to home, once" am