"I assumed the equator was more or less at the upper edge of Africa/lower edge of Europe" - I've met Danes who thought along the same lines, so I'm not sure it's not a common mistake to make. Just as all of North America is north of the equator and all of South America is south of the equator; I guess it just seems more convenient that way.
On an unrelated note, nobody have explicitly mentioned the Gulf Stream or the North Atlantic Drift in the comments, so I figure I should point out the importance of this one when talking about the climate of Western Europe. I live in Jutland, more specifically quite close to the 56th parallel north - this is equivalent to the Southern parts of Hudson Bay or the Bering Sea, and we have a temperate climate.
"Generally speaking, people are much too fast to try to explain [...] things in terms of cultural differences."
This is an important point I might have underlined if I'd written the post today. I think it applies to a lot of stuff besides the desired mode of transport problem.
My main point in this context would probably be that if you want to compare political- or societal structures and decisions - which many people seem to want to do even though it's very hard - you need to know a lot of stuff. Additional information makes it harder to maintain a faulty model.
Incidentally on a related note I may be wrong, but... (read more)
I posted the post below on my own blog a while back, but a friend of mine suggested that it might be a good idea to cross-post a little bit of my stuff here as well. I've made a few changes to the post at the bottom, but it's pretty much the same post as the one I posted back then. Okay, here goes:
...
People often note that it’s a bad idea to compare small European countries with a country that is so big that it is comparable in size to the continent that the small country is a part of. I’ll go into a bit more detail about the differences in this... (read 999 more words →)
Student of economics. Not going to write any more than that about myself at this point.
"To post to the Discussion area you must have at least 2 points." - I'd like to post something I've written, but I need two karma to do so.
"The Equator passes through South America" - I know that. Ecuador's named Ecuador for a reason. My point was that people get both of these (Africa/Europe & North/South America) wrong.
If you'd read the last link in my post above you'd not have posted the comment you just did.