Sometimes I think you Europeans don't truly grasp how large America is. To put this into perspective imagine Europe was America for a second, just theoretically. You could travel all the way from Moscow, Russia to Lisbon, Portugal (a distance of 4629km) and still have the same language, culture, and more or less laws.
Sorry if this was a bit random to bring up, but when you mentioned your country was 70km I immediately thought of this.