[jernfrost]

As a European I got to say most of us have this experience with the US. I don't know southern Europe so well but in much of Northern Europe we talk about religion and politics all the time. You can always count on your American colleagues getting really uncomfortable about that. There as so many cases of people coming from the US and having stories of how they put their foot in their mouth because they did not realize the social conventions in America does not allow politics and religion to be discussed freely.

I find that American very quickly get offended and visible angry if you aren't very careful about how you speak. As a nordic we are used to speaking quite bluntly and that is frequently interpreted as offensive by Americans.