On Shaun Alexander’s recent trip to the United States, he checked off some of the classic American pastimes from his bucket list: Catch a baseball game at Fenway Park in Boston, see live music in New York, visit the Alamo and try barbecue in Texas.
But he also had an unusual goal: Alexander wanted to visit Bass Pro Shops in every state he passed through.
“It’s just unbelievable,” said Alexander, 38, from Edinburgh. “It’s like a theme park and a museum all wrapped into, you know, a big retail store.”
He is an avid fisherman, he said, but it was about much more than that. There was a model humpback whale on the roof of a location in Foxborough, Mass., that he compared to “the size of a whale that we have in one of our biggest museums in the U.K.” He added that it was “the type of thing that could really only exist in America.”
Like many World Cup visitors, Alexander is going off the beaten path while he follows his team. Whether it’s because of the downtime between games, the routes between stadiums or the steep prices of hotels, many are getting out of big cities or taking road trips.
Their itineraries may include the more traditional Statue of Liberty or the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But as millions of Americans follow along on social media, buoyed by the videos romanticizing daily life in their towns, the soccer tourists are also marveling over the everything-in-one Southern gas station chain Buc-ee’s, as well as combing through grocery store shelves and picking up Italian heroes at the local deli.
“I’ve been coming to America since I was a kid, but we’re visiting places that I’ve never been,” said Sammie Bell, 30, from Hertfordshire, England, whose trip included stops in Dallas, Fort Worth and Tampa, Fla. She regarded not only the stadiums as highlights, but also the wildlife. The lizards she saw in Florida, she said, were “the animals we’d see in a zoo in England.”
Alexander, who has come to be known online as Scottish Shaun, highlighted the ice machines. “In Europe, you have to fight for your ice.”
For Elsa Thora, 24, who is from Stockholm, it was the fire trucks: “They’re shiny, they look really cool — just like in the movies.”
Views of the United States are skewing negative, and joyous headlines about the World Cup have been interspersed with those about players and a referee being denied entry at the border. So videos depicting international visitors finding joy in the mundane have been unifying and welcome.
“All of those stories are true,” Jeroen Boersma, 30, from Harich, the Netherlands, said of the news. “But the people that do come here to the U.S., they also see the other side, which is something you cannot see if you don’t come here — and that is the beauty of American people.”
Boersma moved to Denver in 2021 and has been posting for years, but noticed his viewership spike in recent weeks, especially on a video about Buc-ee’s.
“From the people I’ve spoken to,” Alexander said, the content “seems like a bit of an antidote. You know, they’ve needed some kind of positivity.”
Many of the reaction videos say they can’t get enough of this content. Viral clips feature glimpses of food, shopping and transit, and a fair share of wow that car is big. They also show moments of cultural exchange or inspiration, like when fans of Japan’s team in Dallas helped clean up after a game; or when Congo’s team wore commanding leopard-embellished suits; or when Scots and Bostonians partied together.
Most focus on the small things. “The highlight for me has been seeing how happy X users are when they see me enjoying the food,” said Tatsuya Takeuchi, a 36-year-old journalist from Kawagoe, Japan, who recently posted about eating muddy buddies.
One of the must-see spots in the TikTok genre is Chipotle, the fast-casual Tex-Mex chain that inspires devotion among both locals and visitors.
“Where to begin on Chipotle?” said Giovanni Piacentini-Smith, 20, from Glasgow. “It’s like my one true American love. I remember the first time I tried Chipotle in New Hampshire — it was something that my taste buds had not experienced.”
Buc-ee’s, the road trip mainstay with a friendly beaver mascot, has also enchanted (or perplexed) visitors.
“It is very bright and very dazzling,” said Alexander, who loves the chain’s beaver nuggets.
“It brings everything that’s American into one spot,” Boersma said. “America is a lot of big foods, a lot of crazy foods. It is driving culture. It is big cars.”
He added that it “was bigger than any supermarket in all of the Netherlands, and it’s a gas station — and they sell fresh food that is really good.”
And their complaints echo those of Americans, like the traffic and the long drives, for starters. In Boston, Alexander was stuck for three hours trying to get to a World Cup match. In Florida, Bell said she was “driving on roads for four, five hours — and you’re still in Florida, which is crazy.”
Piacentini-Smith lamented the inconsistency of his Dunkin’ and Chipotle orders.
“I don’t think I’ve had the same Dunkin’ once, even though I get the exact same order every single place,” he said.
Same goes for Chipotle portion sizes, a much-debated topic in this country: “I’m not a big man, come on,” he said. “A bit more meat, mate.”
But travelers agree on one thing: “Everyone’s just so nice,” Bell said. Almost all had been invited to drinks or given tips for what to see next.
Alexander highlighted people in New York who had helped him figure out the subway, and people in Boston who had talked him through baseball rules. “The biggest takeaway for us is the kindness and generosity of people,” he said.
“I‘ve probably had at least 30, 40 people invite me to their homes,” Piacentini-Smith said.
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
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