I’ve only been abroad one time, and there were little gecko/lizard things everywhere, climbing up walls and scurrying across roads, and nobody cared. I was constantly fascinated but to the locals they’re just kinda there.
Bonus question to anyone who visited the UK - was there anything that fascinated you but I’d be taking for granted?
Pic unrelated.
You go to some tiny, dying town and it has 700 years of history, often 1000+ years of proof of habitation before that and a majestic church that is a work of art on its own.
I live in the Canadian prairies.
One time I was flyin’ down the highway and I noticed a man with car parked on the shoulder, staring out into a farmer’s field of flowering Canola.
I stopped because I could think of no reason other than he’s had car trouble, and is staring off into the distance trying to figure out WTF he’s gonna do now.
He explained to me that he wasn’t having car troubles, that he was on a visit from Hong Kong and it’s the first time he’s ever traveled outside. He told me that from the structure of the city and sky rise density, he’d basically never seen a patch of sky or open land. The biggest patch of sky that he’d ever seen would be about the size of a 2 packs of cigarettes held at arms length.
Woah.
And here we have the joke that the terrain is so flat and monotone that you can watch your dog run away for 7 hours.
Not my country, but something that fascinated me in Greece. Greece is a land of honey…and marble rock. Beautiful, swirling, sparkly rock in all different shades. It is so terribly abundant that they use marble in place of concrete.
To the Greeks, it is normal to use marble literally everywhere. They disrespect the beautiful stone, turning it into a curb on the street & slathering it in yellow paint. I saw a yellow curb that was cracked open - exposing the glittering marble rock inside. I found it so funny & sad that I took a picture. We love marble, we think it’s so decadent & fancy, it’s flooring in the finest hotels, businesses, and homes. These people just use marble everywhere; it’s just a rock to them. 😆
It really puts things into perspective.
Living in the Black Forest is sometimes fun.
First of all people admire the “mountains”. While yes, the Black Forest is not quite flat and especially in winter it is often underestimated (we have avalanches and occasionally people die in them) it’s not like they are that step and high. At least from my perspective - I grew up in the actual alps. It would be totally different If I grew up in the Netherlands. (And again: The nature is nice and we have wild wolves, Lynx and s few other rare animals here)
The other thing people totally get excited about is “Black forest cake”. But… It has nothing to do with the Forest… it’s just a reference to its looks and was invented hundreds of kilometres away. While you can get a decent one here by now, it’s still funny.
So…what is the most original thing you can get here? It’s the thing the tourists think that they are all produced overseas. The cuckoo clock. Not kidding, while a shitload of them are cheap china trash, you can actually get nice ones for a reasonable price that were still built here. (And some really really nice ones that look modern and stylish as well. I need one of those one day,but they are ridiculously expensive)
Other than that: Old buildings. My last apartment had some walls that were built at a time Australia wasn’t discovered by Europeans yet. My kids friend lives in a house that is 800 years old - and always belonged to the same family. The hill the local kids go tobogganing in winter very likely was already used in that capacity 2500 years ago as some archeological sites have shown.
Even my current house is 80 years old and that sometimes sounds absolutely ridiculous to friends overseas.
Fireflys.
I’m lucky enough that I see these little guys on a regular basis.
The first time I went to London, the size of the Ravens caught me off guard. I couldn’t get enough of seeing those things. We only really see Grackles in South Texas that regularly and they’re half the size, so I’m sure I was the weird bird guy that day to many people.
I live in New York City. Apparently (based on how shocked they look) tourists come from places without: Gift Shops, Theaters, Rats, Black People, Buildings, or Walking.
The lack of a speed limit on our highways. Some people come here just to drive on a boring frigging highway.
Bonus question to anyone who visited the UK - was there anything that fascinated you but I’d be taking for granted?
Double decker buses maybe. I found them pretty cool compared to the boring buses we usually have here.
Edit: Also, urban foxes. I saw foxes maybe three times in my life before going to London, where they’re basically seen as a nuisance.
no speed limit is annoying as fuck. there is absolute chaos on the autobahn because of it. everyone drives at different speeds and dangerous manouvres (like tailgating, driving 200 kmh on a full road or in the rain) are common occurances. i hate driving in germany. we are an idiot nation when it comes to driving and cars in general
Yeah, I could do without it. When it’s really empty, it can be nice to go 180 for a bit, but more often than not, it causes the kind of problems you mentioned.
Driving 200 kmh is also incredibly wasteful
But it’s super fun
For the people who need the adrenaline rush we could reduce the driving speed on the Autobahn but add something dangerous to the car. Maybe add a random chance for the airbag to activate or tires to explode.
That would still be just as dangerous for other drivers…
A little less, less speed means less energy and more time for others to react
You’re failing to account for the fact that this would seemingly cause more crashes per distance driven…
There’s already a random chance for that
it actually creates a lot of traffic jams too. The differences in speed and the goal to drive even faster produce hard braking moments which have a chain reaction. Especially in rush hour, where it matters, we really don’t get anywhere faster.
We are stupid for not limiting speed
Imagine drivers 10x worse and that’s the USA.
So one fact that I like telling people in America and they dont fully understand: I have 2 speeding tickets in my life and both come from the autobahn
username checks out!
how did you get them?
So only between cities is it without speed. Which I didnt know when I first got there. The next time I was just being dumb, showing off, and didnt notice
The worst part is when you get a ticket, especially at night, they essentially flash bang you to get a clear picture of your face. So not only are you speeding but now your blind for a couple seconds.
Driving too fast
We had bendy buses for a brief moment.
Now those wouldn’t actually be exciting to me as a German, that’s the type of bus I rode to school on. :)
i NORCAL they are basically on the most of the lines that travel the longest routes.
Also, urban foxes. I saw foxes maybe three times in my life before going to London, where they’re basically seen as a nuisance.
I didn’t know they were common in London but I also saw a fox when I was there. It just went through people‘s yards and stopped in the middle of the street to look at us.
Urban foxes are in every city. Foxes and coyotes. You just dont see them often.
Anecdotally I would say that London specifically, rather than the UK as a whole, has either an unusually high population of foxes or a unusually bold one. I’ve never seen so many out in the open as there
Coyotes are only a thing in the Americas, I’m pretty sure.
Forgive an old bushcrafter. I default to my known region.
School mass shootings. For some reason the rest of the world loses their minds over them.
When I visited the US I was excited to see squirrels running around. We don’t have squirrels where I’m from. We took pictures.
It must have looked like we were excited to witness a cloud in the sky.
I saw my first chipmunk last week and I totally screamed oh shit there’s Alvin! in my heart.
Don’t let your inner child die!
I still remember my first chipmunk encounter. I heard the little guys before I saw them and wondered “who the f is out here playing laser tag in the woods? ”
I was a bit excited that the US squirrels are gray and large, we have smaller red ones in Germany.
If you really want to see huge squirrels check out a US college campus. They’re so fat!
Noted
A squirrel in a public park near me climbed up on me to get to the peanuts I was holding, no fear. It was also absurdly obese.
It was also absurdly obese.
Hey, just like many of our people! Yay, America!
Those poor lil things… I feel sad for them. :(
I got a squirrel took my apple away from my hand!
Jesus how strong was that squirrel
Fake news! That user “CatDogL0ver” is just is a dog and a cat using a keyboard. They’re just trying to discredit squirrels.
Had the same experience in Ann Arbor, MI. The next day I learned they have a squirrel feeding club and a kid walked around in the morning with granola bars throwing them out to a circle of 20 chubby squirrels
We have grey squirrels in the UK, although they’re not native. They’re responsible for the decline in native red squirrels, you rarely see them now unless you go to particular areas.
Not only UK. As far as I know the same problem is spreading around all of mainland Europe. US squirrels have a better immune system and a more varied diet, they are also more aggressive and territorial. They are slowly replacing indigenous red squirrels.
Dammit. :( Us humans are so talented at selfishly fucking over indigenous populations and animals in general. Ugh.
In this case, it was just randomness. Some grey squirrels got randomly transported with cargo between North America and Europe and they found a good spot. There was no human intent behind it… (does it make it better?)
We have different colored squirrels in some regions.
https://wildlifeinformer.com/types-of-squirrels/
You’ll need and extra SD card next time you visit.
Ah, very cool. Maybe I’ll visit again once the current presidency ends. If that’s ever going to be the case.
and the german ones are really skittish too.
Those i saw on the canadian campus just lay next to the side walk, chilling. Fat and grey
I wonder where you visited! Grey squirrels are rare where I’m from in the US, 90% brown in midwest
NYC and surroundings
American squirrels can be aggressive. I was eating an apple one day and I kid you not, a squirrel jumped at me and took it from my hand.
I love when people see deer here in North America. You’d think they’re seeing a unicorn, when it’s just some plain ol’ mule deer.
Forest rats.
Totally me in the US! Deers in Europe are stuff for natural parks!
I always lived in states where deer hunting was a pretty common pastime. The first time I went to a zoo in South America, I cracked up when we got to the display of white-tailed deer.
I understand Australians have a similar reaction to zoo kangaroos
I’ve seen deer just wander through my yard in town
We also get turkeys.
Ah, yes. Those fuckers regularly stopped traffic when I lived in Michigan. Not for tourist reasons of course, they’re just big and travel in packs. And take their sweet time crossing the road.
Chipmunks did it for me. They look and act so much like cartoon critters I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I love chipmunks! Such a big squeak from such a tiny body, plus I love their pointy tails :)
When I visited Canada from the US, my extended family and I drove in separate cars, thereby arriving at separate times spread out over a few hours.
Every group of us took basically the same picture when we arrived because we’d previously only seen brown squirrels and there was a solid, dark black one running around in the back yard.
My parents’ neighborhood is ALL black squirrels. I thought they were rare until they moved (only 30 minutes from where I group up) so I was quite surprised to see dozens in their yard
It’s funny what people notice. I have a friend who grew up in the American Southwest, and her wildlife culture shock when she moved away from there came from wild rabbits.
The Southwest is populated by jackrabbits, so after they encountered an eastern cottontail, they were genuinely concerned some malady had befallen it to cause it to have such small ears. She thought maybe someone was torturing the local wildlife and cutting off its ears.
I grew up in rural US, squirrels everywhere. Still fascinated by them! Moved to the southwest, was sad there weren’t trees and squirrels out here. Then saw my first (closely followed by like a dozen more out in the area) ground squirrel! Some touristy areas they will line up all cute doing tricks for scraps of food. They’ve learned our oohs and aahs generate treats.
I love this and was about to post something similar because my family met a family from Australia at Disney World and the little girl was SO excited about the squirrels. It was adorable.
I live in the Midwest, so squirrels are just always there.
Used to work at Disney World. Can confirm the squirrel amazement. (And I worked at Animal Kingdom, the squirrels occasionally got more attention than the actual zoo animals. Although the local ibises hanging out with the spoonbills were still cool.)
My wife is from the Philippines. Squirrels are a thing you have to visit the zoo the see.
Oh wow. I saw a squirrel once in Catalonia. Wonderful sight.
Mirroring what others have said - at a nearby university that has (had? sigh) a large foreign student population, some folks actively feed the squirrels. For several weeks at the beginning of the school year, you could very easily spot new students by who was out taking photos and getting mobbed by these squirrels that are way, way too comfortable getting close to humans.
I’d guess people from monkey countries feel the same way about them impressing us. They’re in similar niches and everything.
No squirrels? You from Greenland? Antarctica?
Israel
Practically every house and apartment has (access to) a sauna. If not inside the apartment, there will most often be a shared sauna in the basement.
About the UK, I’m going to go a bit deeper and note that it was somehow eye-opening that there’s a whole society that actually just daily drives English. For my whole life before the visits to UK and later US, English was the language of the internet and some specific international situations where it was most people’s second language. Until well into my mid-20s, I basically didn’t have real life contact with any community that would just speak English natively, despite speaking it myself fairly okay-ish.
These fellas
On the flipside, when I was in Japan some old guy mocked me for taking a photo of a no littering sign.
Hahaha that sign is so charming though
And it’s another example of “if you don’t want me to do it, don’t make it look so fun”.
Cheeky little guy, he can’t even keep his ear and trunk behind the red line. That elephant truly does not care for our silly human rules.
Someone Japanese said you were taking too many pictures? Haha, that’s ironic given what they’re like abroad.
I was visiting my friends in centrall europe and one if them wanted to show me the local speciality. We travelled 45 minutes by car and other 45 minutes by foot to look teeny tiny swamp. It was line 4m² and It was protectect area. My friend was really proud to show it to me.
I live in country where 26% of our landmass is swamps and wetlands…
Poutine is lazy junk food and there’s nothing impressive about a slop pile of gravy, curds, and fries.
Depositing bottles.
Put them into a machine, and it gives you money back 🤯
Honestly this needs to be more of things in the States. And the deposit cost needs to go up.
If companies were forced to retake their garbage, we’d see far less pollution.
It’s not just that, they wash and reuse the bottles (without melting them down or anything)! Amazing stuff.
They’re finally starting to put more stuff in them here opposed to plastic bottles, and I’m so glad for it.
The US used to do that before the plastics industry (oil company derivatives) squashed it.
they wash and reuse the bottles (without melting them down or anything)
Idk where you’re talking about, but in Finland… That used to be the system, and the bottles which were actually washable were far sturdier than what we have now. Now it’s all flimsy PET bottles which just get shredded and “recycled”.
I used to work in a bottle room back when most deposits were glass bottles and sturdy plastics and only the cans got crushed not reused.
I was the guy in the backroom piling the bottles from a huge conveyor belt (glass bottles) to be organised in pallets. Could manage like 7 beers bottles in one hand, but that was pushing it and the most effective speed was 3-4 bottles per hand per move.
I liked the job but the employer was a massive cunt.
This was because PalPa, the company responsible for maintaining Finland’s recycling system was (and is) a corrupt heap of shit.
It’s owned by the largest breweries and they used it for keeping smaller and foreign companies out if business. You couldn’t get a right to use Finnish bottles –> You had to pay a steep punishment tax for using non-recyclable bottles.
They successfully argued that washing bottles from that many sources would be impossible to organize, so the EU required PalPa to start accepting crushable PET bottles, which are easy to produce without any active coöperation by PalPa.
PalPa(…tine?) was hoping that they could still somehow block this from happening, so they framed the change as Evil EU forcing Finland to stop washing bottles. And when the PET bottles were indeed accepted in the end, they dismantled the whole bottle washing system in Finland so that they wouldn’t be held accountable for their lies.
So, it’s the same thing that happened to our regional bus network (vakiovuorot), basically. And what’s currently happening to our railways.
So, it’s the same thing that happened to our regional bus network (vakiovuorot), basically. And what’s currently happening to our railways.
Don’t forget healthcare and dental. Kids don’t get free dental anymore?
That’s not because of an organization trying to make Finland ignore the EU legislation using strategies that then cause us to run headlong against a wall, though.
Oh yeah, that.
I love that we have nice systems, but I hate it we have so many people who are not willing to see any flaws in Finland.
Where is here?
Oops, sorr. Austria
Happens in multiple countries. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium I know for sure. Probably elsewhere too.
Putting more stuff in washable bottles than before happens in many places? Are you sure?
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In Finland the deposit for bottles of one litre or more have a deposit of 0,40 €.
(And what many foreigners don’t understand is that we are not anti-recycling, so it’s not a problem that the deposit is inside the prices you see in the shop. So, if you see 1,59 € as the price of a bottle of lemonade, 1,59 € is what you pay. Many countries have a system where the deposit is added to the price so that people would think more negatively about it and they’d sell more of the bottles with the text “NO DEPOSIT!!” on them, so people coming from those countries are easily confused by not having to add anything to the prices in their heads.)
Nun weiß ganz Deutschland, dass du hier bist
I’m in this picture and I don’t like it.
But, yeah, seems like such an obviously good idea and it works so well. Why can’t we do that?
