Comments by "Jasper Mooren" (@jaspermooren5883) on "explaining europe to americans" video.

 @hyhhy No they never were Turkey, they were part of the ottoman empire, but that was a whole different beast.
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To the original comment, wasn't that literally her point? That calling Eastern Europe just that is disingenuous at best. Also the fact that Eastern Europe exists doesn't mean that it's all the same thing. Spain is often called Western Europe, yet it is radically different from let's say The Netherlands. No one who knows anything about Europe is saying that Poland and Russia are basically the same, that is just insanity to say. They do share a communist heritage until relatively recently (like well over half the European population was alive when it was still a thing), so it's not that weird that the term is used. It is useful from a historical lens, that doesn't mean that it's one homogeneous place, that was the whole point of the video to state that it isn't. Poland is far more similar to Germany than it is to Russia, that doesn't immediately make the concept of Eastern Europe a useless one.
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Technically not all of the EU is in Europe. Several countries (like France and the Netherlands) have territories that are fully part of their respective nations, and therefore in the EU that are very much outside of Europe. The people that live there vote in national elections, have pasports of these countries and have the same freedom of movement towards the rest of the EU as any other EU citizen. Brazil actually borders the EU for example. It's a bit like Hawaii is fully part of the US but not really in the Americas.
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 @theChaosKe Haha lol, Hamburg: the new Istanbul, half European, half Asian.
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