Yeah but in my experience in the UK people would say' the time zone is different in mainland Europe than ours'

Yeah. It's true for the majority of countries, just not all.

But according to what you said earlier, I'd think you'd consider it an island of North America.  Although that seems silly, it's the logical extension of going entirely by plates IMO.  If not for mashing into Asia it WOULD be an island.  Looking at it from your perspective of judging by the plates, just letting another continent "borrow" your land and claim it as part of itself is even stranger IMO. 

Maybe it can be the American subcontinent of Asia? 

As for your question:  Because it's east of the Ural mountain range? 

1) Nah, I wouldn't consider it an Island because it's connected to eurasia by a big enough piece of land.

America would be considered an Island because it's only conected by Panama which isn't a big enough connection for North and South America to be considered one continent, with South America being a sub continent.

If that was the case... North America would be part of the South American continent... though not even in the form of a sub continent... like how East Russia isn't a sub continent.

2) The Urals are the common answer... but are a physical seperation, when most people were claiming the cultural seperation is what makes europe different.  However with the Urals being the split... there is no cultural difference between Europe and Asia, because East Russia or Asia Russia has an IDENTICAL culture more or less to West Russia or Europeon Russia.

It's kind of like the greeks.  They split Europe and Asia where they did because it put the Ionian greeks on one side... and the "mainland" greeks on the other side.  In otherwords... the Free greeks were on one side... while the enslaved by the persian "loser" greeks were on the other side.

In this case... you don't even have that criteia... making the whole reason for europe being a continent even more murky.

UK = american dogs

they wish that if they team up with US, they will rule the world (again)

Another spectacular comment from Libellule

1.  Well you still have a situation of justifying Europe as being a peninsula due to its status as geologically placidly attached to Asia on the Eurasian plate, but you also say that far east Russia is also Asia despite that it is separated geologically by a fault zone and is on the North American plate. 

It's not an island, and I tend to agree that it would be weird to consider it a subcontinent, but it's something. 

2.  Well, maybe we could say that it WOULD be at the Urals, but 'Asian Russia' gets to be "Grandfathered in" because it has a European foot in the door.  After all, that's probably how Asian Russia got to HAVE the same culture ... European Russians moved there.  Am I wrong?  If not, that's why we can say that Europe ends at the Urals even while saying a European country & culture extends to the Pacific Ocean. 

haha rofl i love the deadpan reply from lord flasheart
@libellule
im guessing your french?

1) It's part of Eurasia.  If I were a geographer or geologist, i'd consider it a sub continent, but they don't.  For some reason you need possession of the plate.

2) Couldn't you also make the case that the USA and Canda would have to be "grandfathered" in as well.  Leaving North America rather bare?  Afterall we're bypassing one geographical barrier that matter yet not another in such a case.

This is why I like to keep continents to geography and geology... and just use Socio-political zones for culture.  It's much better represented since you have East and West Europe split, South and west africa.   Egypt is part of the Middle East instead of Africa, which makes more sense since egypt is much more culturally similar to the middle east then either south africa or the Carthginian influenced west africans...

@NKAJ
I don't know how much of Blackadder you know but I almost replied with WOOF!