[holoduke]

Just wondering. But I hardly see any Americans in foreign countries. Seems they all have to work all the time. But in the many countries I travel through I generally see only Europeans , Asians and occasionally Australians. Hardly ever an American citizen.

[qaq]

In USSR foreign travel was severely restricted even to soviet block countries.

[oh_sigh]

Not only to the bloc countries, but even travel entirely within Russia was also restricted and bureaucratically regulated, requiring internal passports and visas for travel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_system_in_the_Soviet_...

[uwagar]

what was the rationale?

[qaq]

People were not supposed to see how people actually live in the "west" since quality of life was much higher even in other soviet block countries.

[justsomehnguy]

Not enough KGB officers to tail them.

/s

There was multitude of reasons but the main ones were what you needed to have a good standing in the society[0] and the need to control every aspect of that society. People who would see a (even a little) better living could start asking questions. One could say that was a result of fear.

[0] the article provides one such example:

> Because of Dmitry’s active involvement in the communist youth groups, when he was 15, his school sent him to the Pioneer summer camp in Nordhausen near Erfurt in East Germany.

[csomar]

Probably luck or something about how you went that made you not interact with Americans. I met lots of Americans all over the world.

Also: https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/ST.INT.DPRT/rank...

The European numbers are probably a bit inflated due to Schengen and their closeness.

[KptMarchewa]

Most of USA citizens live pretty close to either Canada or Mexico.

[yostrovs]

Canada isn't much a vacation destination. Canadians travel South. Mexico is not very attractive to Americans right now due to crime.

[qaq]

There is way less crime in Cabo than in most of the US.

[thatfrenchguy]

Americans all go to the same places (they tend to be very trendy / checklist oriented and go for small amounts of time), it’s really obvious as a French person in America, all my American colleagues go to places I never visit in France and vice versa.

[kzrdude]

We see a lot of american visitors in europe (basically all over the place). In a normal year.

[SomeBoolshit]

Where? I mostly meet European tourists, as well, but that's probably because I only travel within Europe, which is where I live, so it's very easy to reach.

[qaq]

Americans take 93.0 Million international outbound trips each year

[netjiro]

The gp observation is anecdotal, right?

In 2019 Germans made more international tourism trips than americans, despite having only a quarter of the population.

But the observations depend on where you travel and see other travellers, right? Go to nw mexico and I expect most tourists are from the us? Whereas mallorca is practically the southernmost german bundesland? And cyprus presents plenty of russians?

And comparing geography: Germany is geographically much smaller than the US, and in a place like Liechtenstein it is easy to make an international trip just to go shopping, even if you take the bike.

[helloguillecl]

I wonder how this statistic would look if you'd stop counting Majorca and such as "international tourism" :)

[csomar]

Which is more than the population of Germany. These numbers must include Schegen movement otherwise the German are quite a touristy people. But including Schengen movements is like including inter-USA travel for Americans. I bet the US will rank much higher if we were to do that.

[qaq]

all very valid points I think the discussion was in the context of USSR

[yardstick]

Source? Is this the number of passengers, aircraft movements, or something else? Also is it for American citizens or just people flying from US to non-US?

Also factor in that many people who do fly, fly multiple times a year.

If that 93m is individual passengers then you should discount it quite a bit to accommodate frequent fliers and overseas tourists returning home.

[qaq]

A google search snippet :) thats number of trips taken by US citizens Number of US citizens who traveled is 44 mil so about half of the number of trips.

[flohofwoe]

At least Berlin is chock-full with US peeps.