what is that you usually do or see in your country or area but is weird to do in other area you have traveled or vice versa?? like it is unusual to wear footwear indoors in asia.
Germany: Workers have rights, and can go to court easily if needed.
In Canada, people do not run from the rain… if they are out and about and it starts raining, they just ignore it, they don’t walk faster, rarely improvise coverage, etc
In Venezuela, my country of origin, people run from the rain like it’s lava falling from the sky
When I visited London (around the year 2000), I noticed that every man walking in the streets either wore a hat or carried an umbrella.
Not much point in running from it, you’re already getting wet if you’re caught out in it 🤷♀️. I’ll run if I hear thunder though, don’t want to get electrocuted.
Huh, thought everyone ran from the rain. I usually have a hat if I’m outside so the rain doesn’t annoy me.
Canadian here, from the wet coast. I’ve run in the rain before, but it needs to be monsoon level before that’s necessary. Anything less is just meh.
Tipping as a social obligation when eating at dine in restaurants which in turn allows the waiter to be paid less by the employer and theoretically lowers menu prices.
Yeah, but many servers make serious bank. You won’t find those people bitching about tips. Worked IT at a payroll firm, frequently saw the numbers.
Servers who bust serious ass make serious bank. Worked as a server. Bad servers have bad numbers, skilled servers have good numbers
The Asshole Subsidy. Extra money is taken from the people who are kind enough to worry about the waiter getting paid, effectively giving assholes who choose not to tip a discount.
Are you calling non tippers the assholes, and not the business owners or practice of tipping in general? Tipping is out of control and a stupid obligation as it is currently being used.
Large-scale evacuations because of unexploded WW2 ordinance.
Own a musket for home defense, since that’s what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. “What the devil?” As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he’s dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it’s smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, “Tally ho lads” the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion.He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up, Just as the founding fathers intended.
Close enough
Welcome back, Kevin McCallister
Civilians openly carrying handguns
I’m with the other commenter below. I’m not sure this is terribly usual, even where legal.
I keep an eye out for this sort of thing just sort of out a professional interest, and in terms of openly carrying firearms (not knives), I’ve only spotted two people doing it this year. And one of them was a guy who I think was intending to carry concealed, but was not doing a very good job due to an ill-fitting shirt.
Being very touchy and physical.
Cheek kisses are usual for strangers. And it’s normal to touch people you barely know or have a small friendship.
Country is Spain.
How small does the friendship need to be for me to casually smooch all the pretty members of your society?
Mass shootings in the US. It’s become so common here that most if not all are desensitized.
Wearing tracksuits in Ireland as regular day clothing. They are not nearly as common now as they were before, but many young people still wear them because they’re comfortable and cheap. I remember German foreign exchange students asking the teacher why do Irish people always go to gym because of the tracksuits.
Wearing thongs (flip flops) in a grocery store.
Kangaroos littering the side of the road (they have about 4 neurones and all of then are suicidal)
The only place I have seen young kids (think 6 years old) swear similarly to here in Australia is in Scotland, and they are just as feral as we are.
Walking down the street at night. In the UK and USA it was apparently just not a thing you did. Here I will walk home at 2am no worries, and tonnes of people walk home from the pub drunk enough to not always make it home and sometimes just pass out on the footpath. Never had a problem, never been mugged or similar in that situation, and after living in the UK and visiting the USA I can definitely say I would never do that there.
Wearing swimmers (bikini or budgie smugglers) and going for food and drink on the same trip. The number of times I’ve gotten coffee, had lunch, or jumped into the bank while dressed for the beach is uncountable, but never ever outside Australia.
Hitting your kids is rare here. Spanking is not really normal and is definitely not common in public compared to my visit to the USA or my time in the UK. In both of those people would cuff their kids or slap their hand when they were being unruly. That is uncommon here and I have seen people intervene when someone was hitting their kid in public on more than one occasion. The same goes for animals, people don’t like you hitting your dog either. Not to say it doesn’t happen, but it is not considered OK.
Healthcare. We have it. We love it. In the UK the NHS was OK, not great, and the USA is terrifying. My meds would cost me about $310 per month but end up costing a max of $38, unless I spend $1200 in the year at which point the rest are free. As in, no cost, just pick them up, zero dollars. Mine are half medically necessary and half for better function, but for some people they are way more necessary and I am so happy they can just go get them, no risk of rationing meds.
People do talk about politics and religion here, but not with random people and not in public. If someone isn’t interested you are generally going to back off quickly and leave it be. Religion and politics are mostly private and the few people who do talk tend to not be too intense about it. Certainly most don’t become a registered Labor or Liberal party member with the group identity associated. It is much more loosely held and less culturally relevant.
First of all,
You fuckers need to bring out your own dictionary.
Budgie smugglers? I thought that’s Australian for Gum Boots. Turns out, it kinda is actually, but for your Johnson & co.
Secondly, When wearing a thong (the real sexy kind) in a grocery store becomes a norm in your part of planet, I’m moving there permanently.
Third,
Lunch\Cafe in your beachwear?
Bro, you should’ve started with this.
Imma land there now.Secondly, When wearing a thong (the real sexy kind) in a grocery store becomes a norm in your part of planet, I’m moving there permanently.
I want you to pause for a second and think what the average person looks like.
Yep, though self selection plays a role here. If you feel like you look bad you will probably be less likely to go out in swim gear. The average you will see in swimmers is well above the actual population average.
Kangaroos littering the side of the road (they have about 4 neurones and all of then are suicidal)
To be fair to them, cutting across the path of a predator is pretty effective right up until the predator is a two-tonne death machine.
Walking down the street at night. In the UK and USA it was apparently just not a thing you did. Here I will walk home at 2am no worries, and tonnes of people walk home from the pub drunk enough to not always make it home and sometimes just pass out on the footpath. Never had a problem, never been mugged or similar in that situation, and after living in the UK and visiting the USA I can definitely say I would never do that there.
Still pretty dangerous for women, I’ve gotten plenty of harassment at night. But definitely far safer than the US.
People do talk about politics and religion here, but not with random people and not in public. If someone isn’t interested you are generally going to back off quickly and leave it be. Religion and politics are mostly private and the few people who do talk tend to not be too intense about it. Certainly most don’t become a registered Labor or Liberal party member with the group identity associated. It is much more loosely held and less culturally relevant.
I think it depends. People are still fairly likely to talk about what they think is a “fair go”, and we’ve had some massive political protests lately. But it feels like each party has to meet in the middle a lot more, so stuff isn’t as polarising, and things that are don’t get talked about as openly.
Also in the US they have to register for a party when they register to vote. Feels like they heard about the concept of the secret ballot from us and then just failed completely on the execution.
Most states in the US don’t require you to register for a party, although there are some that do.
Also, there are places in the US that are incredibly safe, but most of the big cities are not. But the US is very large and diverse.
Do old people just stop right in a doorway blocking everyone behind them outside the US? I’ve been to other countries (specifically Ireland, Germany and Mexico), and didn’t experience this but I spent much less time there than I have here.
Being able to go basically anywhere by bike, foot, or public transport. And just our bike infrastructure in general. I honestly don’t know how I could live in most other countries because it seems like basically everything happens by car or foot. Being able to bike anywhere is so much nicer and gives a lot of freedom from an early age.
Strangely we Dutch people also seem to be quite alone in our view that helmets on normal bikes are not really necessary. They make bikes more prevalent imo, because you don’t have to drag a helmet along everywhere. You just park you bike and the only thing you have with you because of it is a key, no special clothes, helmets, etc. I think that’s also possible because of our bicycle infrastructure and culture.
Kids learn to bike from a young age, in traffic. You see very young kids just cycle on their smol little bike with a parent on the outside sort of shielding them from traffic. Safely on bike roads, but also just on shared roads with cars. In general kids are quite free to just play outside. I live close to a school and I see plenty of kids all across the neighborhood, just playing without parental supervision. It’s what we did back in the day too, without mobile phones or anything. We’d usually be home on time for dinner or our parents would find us somewhere in the neighborhood and tell us it was time to get home.
Germany: public benches are specifically placed to be full view of the sun for as long as possible, a wild proportion of people have bread slicing machines, and you’re not allowed to prevent someone from using even a private toilet if they really need it.
Monoculture. I live in Canada, and it’s pretty rare for a person, and especially a group, to have only one culture they draw from to firm their habits and identity. Even immigrants have their home and whatever mishmash of a culture their work ends up with. Its somewhat easy to tell travelers apart from residents by them having a discernible accent. If I can tell your accent is Irish, and not just some combination of Irish, British and Ukrainian, then your not here permanently.
And honestly that’s what I love about Canada and why we are the best country in the world. We’re a mosaic rather than a melting pot. Each culture that comes here contributes something to the Canadian Zeitgeist that gets disseminated to everyone else, like spicing up an otherwise boring W.A.S.P existence.
When my family moved here from Portugal, they managed an apartment building in order to have a place to live while my father worked construction and my mother was a housekeeper. (Yeah…yeah…I know…it doesn’t get any more Portuguese than that)
Anyway, I was just a toddler and the family was immediately befriended by the older Ukrainian lady next door and we soon became a part of her extended family for everything from christmas to birthdays, etc. My first memories are of toddling down the hall in my pjamas first thing in the morning to “Auntie Anne’s” apartment. She was more my grandmother than my biological grandmothers who lived in Portugal at the time.
Through them, we learned kaiser. My mother learned how to make peirogies, cabbage rolls, etc…
We are without a doubt the most Ukrainian Portuguese family to have ever existed and I love it.
Sorry…got nostalgic there for a moment. Auntie Anne passed away decades ago and I still think about her sometimes.
I had a prof in college from Canada, whose parents were German and Korean, and you could hear both accents at the same time. I never encountered such a thing. Also funny that he didn’t have a single bit of Canadian accent.
Thanking the bus drivers when exiting the bus.
i always have, even as a grade school kid–back then the bus rides to and from school were so long, i saw the bus driver more on school days than my family.
Depends on the bus type though. A lot of buses have a rear door, and sometimes it’s kinda rude to go out through the front when there’s a lot of people coming in through the front. So then you end up leaving through the rear and it would be awkward to shout ‘Thank you!’ to the driver, over everyone’s head.
In Dublin, everyone would enter and leave via the front door. Only Covid changed that, and drivers started opening the second doors in the middle of the bus. Still, people are used to exit through the front, or shout their thank-yous from the other door.
It was like this in the Bay Area when I lived there, like in Alameda county at least. People exited at the rear doors and gave a thank you to the driver. Became a habit for me. I moved to Norway a few years ago and absent-mindedly said “Takk!” as I exited and I was quickly educated that, we don’t do that here.
I started doing it years ago in Belgium and I see more people do it these days. I don’t shout but wave at the mirror. Bus drivers watch the mirror to check when to close their doors. After a while they get to know you and they trend to be more welcoming when you enter the bus.
Ireland?
Could also be Canadia
