In the UK the legal minimum is 28 days. In theory you can take the days however you want. In practice though you usually have to negotiate when to take them with your boss. They have to allow you to take them all off at some point in the year though so they're usually pretty accommodating.
I've always been surprised at how little people get in the US. Given that it's a wealthy nation it seems to lag considerably behind European countries in this regard.
NB: Those 28 "include" bank holidays. It used to be a 20 day mandatory minimum, which was meant to be 20 days + bank holidays, but unscrupulous bosses were including bank holidays in the 20, so some people were only getting 12 days "real" holiday. (Days they could pick).
So now it's a 28 day minimum, of which 8 are usually bank holidays and 20 free to pick.
In Austria it's 25 + bank holidays, and Austria has a large amount of bank holidays so some years it can be around 35 days free. I was pretty shocked when I first started working here how much time was given free. I'm going to have a hard time readjusting when/if I go back to Canada.
People working hourly jobs don't get much guatanteed vacation and we have lots of them. Just about any full-time professional setting will have much more. Somewhere around 20 days when you factor in vacation and holidays and most give more days after a few years of service. The end result is that the older working population has many more days it just isn't mandated by the government. In regards to wealthy nation vacation times: It is possible that prosperity is not derived from vacation.
I've always been surprised at how little people get in the US. Given that it's a wealthy nation it seems to lag considerably behind European countries in this regard.