Ask Lemmy

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.

Poutine is lazy junk food and there's nothing impressive about a slop pile of gravy, curds, and fries.

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.

In Oxford, it's "normal" to see students walking around in sub-fusc (formal academic dress) at certain times of year. It's not just for matriculation and graduation, you have to do all of your exams in it, too. Tourists seem to love it, though. Some will ask random students for photographs. Some won't bother asking.

When I was in grad school, a French post doc saw one of the pine cones ( some get around the size of your head). She wanted to keep it to prove that “ everything is bigger in America “

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.

My school was in a village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so in the morning there’d be coachloads of Japanese and American tourists unloading and getting their cameras out and I was just trying to not be late for registration.

The Derby. So glad I moved out of Louisville, KY as soon as I graduated high school.

I was born and raised in New Hampshire. The leaves turning in autumn is just another part of the season for us like pumpkins, apple cider donuts, and haunted hayrides. People from other parts of the US or even other countries, though, treat it like its a wonder of the world.

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.

I live in the Gulf Islands of BC Canada. So. Many. Tourists. I don’t leave my house on the weekends in the summer. We have fabulous beaches though, and it really is lovely. I moved so much as a kid so I’ve always been like oh this is a cool place, I could move here whenever I travel. This is the first time in my life when I’m happy to be going home. Vancouver island is amazing.

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.

Walking to a supermarket, riding your bicycle to work.

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.

School mass shootings. For some reason the rest of the world loses their minds over them.

I lived in London for a few years and it always amazed me to see foxes just roaming about. I still think it's cool.

I'm from another country, foxes are not really a thing here.

When I lived in the US, I lived in cities on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. People who weren't used to river traffic would get excited about riverboats and barges.

And people from other climates always got excited about snow. Even the slightest flurries were cause for celebration.

Now I live in the Andes, and the exciting things here that the locals take for granted (or even count as nuisances) are the volcanoes. I can see one from my apartment. Four years in, and I still admire it every day.

In the UK, the thing I thought was fascinating was just the sheer amount of history literally everywhere. Like, 2000-year-old stone monuments in people's sheep pastures. It made me understand how extraordinarily young my native country and my current home country both are.

Kinda the opposite of the question, but I'm a USian and I was super excited when I saw some European countries have public bathroom doors that didn't have tiny slot that you could see through while I was pooping.

What the fuck are we doing over here? Besides the letting fascists take over thing.

Opposite: I (US-ian) was visiting friends in Germany and they took me on a bike ride in the woods.

“Look!!” (Bike sudden halt, stop and point into a tree with full arm) “a squirrel!”

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.

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.

These fellas

On the flipside, when I was in Japan some old guy mocked me for taking a photo of a no littering sign.

Depositing bottles.

Put them into a machine, and it gives you money back 🤯

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...

Whales, northern lights, reindeer

The sea