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.
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.
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.
We had bendy buses for a brief moment.
i NORCAL they are basically on the most of the lines that travel the longest routes.
Now those wouldn’t actually be exciting to me as a German, that’s the type of bus I rode to school on. :)
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
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
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.
Imagine drivers 10x worse and that’s the USA.
Driving 200 kmh is also incredibly wasteful
But it’s super fun
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?
Driving too fast
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.
Oktoberfest
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…
In Southern California it’s got to be the palm trees. Nope, not the ocean, the beaches, the Hollywood sign, iconic neighborhoods and buildings. It’s the palm trees. Out of state relatives and coworkers always gawk at and comment on the palm tree lined streets.
Dude, they’re frickin’ tall. Those Southern California trees are something else.
I was also fascinated by your beach-squirrels. I’ve lived near the ocean most of my life and I never saw beach-squirrels til I went to Ventura.
They’re the most worthless trees and they’re about to die, too. I hope we replace them with native trees in all but the most iconic places.
Leaves.
Yes, tree leaves.
Each fall when they start changing color flocks of tourists come up to gawk at them.
To be fair it’s very pretty. I get that one
Michigan, or New York?This is what I was going to say.
In the late 1800s when Jasper Cropsey was exhibiting landscape paintings in the UK, folks didn’t believe that his colour palette was accurate
https://collections.brandywine.org/objects/2656/autumn-on-the-brandywine-river
Yup I live right near the Brandywine. PA gets beautiful fall colors! They’re also great along the Delaware up near the Water Gap (but I’m biased because the Delaware is my favorite river) :)
Wait hang on, the UK has heaps of trees that go that colour every year
Painting is of a river in Pennsylvania. The artist painted it while there, then displayed it in the UK. Many who saw it, not being familiar with the fall colors of the northeast US, thought it was fake.
I know, I’m saying that the UK gets the same colours at the same time of year. It should not have been weird to that audience
You forget that the world was B/W until the sixties, give or take.
North American trees species have evolved to have more vibrant fall colors than European species.
So you’re basically proving that British guy’s point that yes, they are a different color but no-one believes it because they think they know what fall looks like in temperate climates.
We visited DC in the fall last year. It took us close to 2 hours to walk from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial statue because my wife was taking pictures of all the trees along the way.
I just moved to New England and this will be my first fall here. My property is completely surrounded by 50’+ trees. I’m sure it will get old quick.
Especially if you need to rake them up etc.
Every region is different in that regard.
Maybe youre just numb to the view.Told a lady I had just moved here (NW Florida).
“Oh honey you’ll love it here! We have four seasons; green, green, green and brown.”
Man… I’m in east Tennessee.
Folks just roll up to look at the leaves… and I’m like.
Eh. Not much rain this year so they are pretty drab looking currently…
But you still see tons of people taking photos on their phones that they’ll never look at again. Haha
When I was a kid we hosted two Trinidadians as part of an exchange in the Autumn and they’d never seen the leaves falling - they were worried that all the trees were dying off. This isn’t a “stupid foreigner” gag, it was probably just the thing that shocked them the most. They loved the trains and the narrowboats.
One of the guys that came for our February wedding was truly alarmed at all the dead tress. I couldn’t figure out why he was saying that, but he was a tree guy so I went with it.
10 years later I figured it out. He assumed none of the trees dropped leaves because Florida. Some do, some don’t, some stay yellow all winter and drop in the spring. It’s not even consistent within species.
I had a similar experience with an exchange student who visited in february. She very worriedly asked why our trees didn’t have any leaves and was amazed when I said that just happens in winter and they come back.
I just made much the same comment!
They probably have foliage that always stays green until it dies.
So I can kinda understand where that sentiment is coming from.
cactuses
The Henrik Ibsen statue near my home, and also just about all street-facing buildings built before like 1960. People stop to take pictures but I’m just like, people live there. It’s a pretty row of houses, but have some respect. See also, Bryggen.
This:
Photo was taken on the pin here, facing in the same direction as the camera. It is very pretty here.
(Note: I cannot afford the two commas it takes to live here, I live in the Portland metro area.)
Let’s be honest, that was a humble brag adding a picture of a State Park.
(Mostly) very good public transit in big cities and even in some smaller areas.
I personally still love to see the mountains. I grew up in a place scraped flat by glaciers in the US and seeing the mountains on a couple of sides of me every day here in Japan still feels really neat and inspiring, even a decade in.
I’m in the UK and it’s totally normal here to have kids sitting on harbour walls catching crabs (crabbing) at any seaside town. I don’t give it a second thought but it seems to fascinate foreign tourists.
The Derby. So glad I moved out of Louisville, KY as soon as I graduated high school.
Black squirrels. They’re very normal to us but I find a lot of people who travel here, especially from the U.S. are shocked to see them lol
Hot air balloons. I see them in the sky most mornings when I go for a walk, weather permitting.
The ocean! So fascinated by it! I love it, but it is always there, waiting. No need to go to it. It will get you eventually.
I moved to the midwest USA 15 years ago and I still can’t get over the trees screaming at me. It’s deafening but no one seems to care.
The trees are silent where I come from
Em, what?
oh, riiiiiight. Did you know someone who moved from CA complained to the town hall open mic night in my town about them? As in “what will we do about the noise?”
I live in Cincinnati and I care. I find the cicadas incredibly annoying. Not only the noise, they also leave their shells all over the place and walking down the sidewalk creeps me out. crunch crunch crunch
