I think you are really stereotyping here. I suspect your impressions are based more on your social circles than the actual culture. If your circles are in work related settings or with other transplants from outside D.C., the experienice is a lot different than if interacting with D.C. natives. Likewise for non midwesterners who move to the Midwest.

You certainly have a point, and I definitely was generalizing.

My social circles consist mostly of international folks who work in various agencies and laboratories, and a few who work in private industry.

My biggest fault with DC (and most of the east coast to be honest) is just the difficulty of starting a conversation with someone. It seems like a lot of people walk around with their heads down here (either glued to a phone or the pavement) so as to avoid making eye contact. Folks here also give me strange looks when I say "sorry" all the time.

But hey, different cultures and different strokes. Not saying one is objectively better, but I definitely know which one I prefer personally.

Very much this. If you're a transplant that's come for work and spend you're time with other transplants that have come for work, it's not surprising that you'll end up talking about what you do for work. This is particularly true if you go to generic young professional events (whereas if you go to, say, a language meetup people will ask you more about your experience with the language). There's nothing particularly wrong about this, but it will give you a skewed view of things if you think it is representative of the entire area (for instance, transplants who think that native Washingtonians are virtually nonexistent).

I'd also say that a lot of people just ask where you work as a matter of conversation, not because they're interested in what you can do for them in business. Opening a conversation that way unfortunately has a lot of side effects.

It's always fun when someone from HQ is transferred out to the rural Siberian hinterland of MSFC. A combination of "Wait, they have Starbucks here in the middle of nowhere?" and "Why are there cows next door?"

Having just gotten back from Asia, I'm convinced at this point there are Starbucks everywhere.

And they plan to open another 12,000 stores globally by 2021: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-starbucks-investors-idUSKB...

They have around 25k stores now, roughly half in the U.S.

Haha I'm at GSFC so I'm somewhere in between, but we still have to deal with 95/495 traffic, which is a real drag.

There's something like 19,000 people working on Redstone Arsenal. Do not try to enter around 7:00 am (0700 for those of you with a 24-hour bent) or leave around 3:00 pm (1500...). Huntsville traffic is usually moderately heavy, except for a 45-minute window around those times.