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.
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.
When I was a kid, my dad brought me to a public park where he played racket ball. T the public toilet there didn’t even have doors on the shit down toilets. So my only experience with public restrooms until like middle school, was that, various single toilet far food/gas station restrooms where I could lock the door to the entire thing, and school. So I thought like half of all public restrooms didn’t have doors for the toilets.
A hero, (good guy with a gun) has to be able to inspect all the toilets, in case there is a trans or weird looking person in there.
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.
Fuck these things! I moved into an old wood cabin on the edge of town with a small crawl space. Two of these little fuckers got underneath the house and sounded like they were carrying a heavy rock, scraping against other rocks(r as one fever dream showed me, a tiny coffin). Also you can’t bait them cause they only dig up and eat live grubs. So you have to study their movements and set up some 2x4 walls to guide them into a trap. And they can jump like you wouldn’t believe! When I released one of them out in the boondocks near a creek, the little fucker reared back and launched itself four feet straight up in the air to clear a fence.
Grackles being half the size is a bit of an understate, a common grackle tops out at about 5 oz & 13" with a wingspan up to 18". A raven’s common size, on the larger end, is 4½ lbs & 28" with a 60" wingspan.
Absolutely. Grackles are like my hard wired “default bird size”, so when I saw what looked like a grackle the size of a dog, it short circuited the more logical, in charge of measuring things parts of my brain.
I’ve eaten armadillo (yes, it tastes like chicken). This was before I found out they can apparently spread leprosy to humans.
Only the nine banded ones. I had to do some research on dillos when I had to trap a couple under my house. Now they are the more common ones in the southern US, but there are so many more types. Like check out this cute little fucker named the pink fairie armadillo
Completely leprosy free!
Edit to add: But please don’t eat it!
Does he have a tail or am I seeing the armadillo’s dick there?
They have tails. May still be a dick idk
armadillo’s willy
School mass shootings. For some reason the rest of the world loses their minds over them.
It’s the high concentration of Likes and Prayers.
I knew god was personally responsible for the few thousand children killed every year by gun violence!
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 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.
I’ve seen deer just wander through my yard in town
We also get turkeys.
Totally me in the US! Deers in Europe are stuff for natural parks!
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 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.)
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 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
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
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.
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.
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.
Oh wow. I saw a squirrel once in Catalonia. Wonderful sight.
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!”
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.
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…
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
Driving 200 kmh is also incredibly wasteful
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.
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. :)
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.
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.
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.
Marble is expensive in places where there isn’t already a lot of it simply because it’s HEAVY.
But it also isn’t used in the fancy rich places simply because it’s expensive, it’s also because it’s beautiful.
I feel like it’s 80% the expense. If most rock was like that everybody would be looking for boring sandstone.
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”.
Mountains, Great beer and legal weed.
Pnw?
That’s my assumption but Colorado has a couple decent breweries as well
You win the detective contest on this one. It’s NoCo.
Niiice! 🥳🥳🥳
So Canada then.
Canada does have mountains and legal weed.
Chiang Mai?
Miami
I miss the mountains in Amsterdam
take me there
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…
The first time my cousins from FL visited Canada, it was July. They were surprised there was no snow. So, we took them over to the rec centre and they saw a small pile of snow out back. They were thrilled.
It was dumped out of a Zamboni.
My aunt is a teacher at one of the poorer schools in LA. She says every once in a while they’ll arrange a plow to bring a load of snow down from the mountains and dump it in the parking lot for the kids to play in it for the afternoon until it melts
Grew up in Ontario and it was always fun as a kid to grab some of the shaved ice behind rec centres to throw at your friends when it was like 33C out
What in your country/area is totally normal but visitors get excited for?
This is so mundane fried chicken for me, just comfort food in the Philippines, but no thanks to some influencers, tourists flock to this specific fast food restaurant expecting it to be some culinary treasure.
Like a Jolibees or something?
Whales, northern lights, reindeer
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.
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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