Did you notice anything interesting while you were over there?
I've visited a few different countries and I always notice interesting things, may it be things or just cultural differences...
Like in Canada, I was really impressed by the little hooks (that's meant to hang your belongings) underneath the chairs and tables of restaurants and cafes! And at the time- they had card machines where you could tap your card, which was so crazy to me!!! Now, they're everywhere but I thought that it was so cool
In the UK, non carbonated water is called "Still water" and in certain places.. it looked like it was discouraged to eat at the restaurants and cafes? It looked like it was rather preferred if you had it to-go?
I had the same experience in Germany with water. This might sound a little mean, and don’t worry, I didn’t show it or anything but it really really, really irked me that carbonated water considered was the default. I don’t find it refreshing at all. In one restaurant they referred to it as “loud” and “quiet” water which I thought was a good way to refer to it XD
The toilets flushing in Europe with wall buttons instead of levers. I went to one house in Germany that had a really long pull chain and that was really neat!
It seemed TV is less censored in the Netherlands than it is in the US, I saw a headline with “****” in it on the local news.
I’m sure there’s more, which I’ll comment later if I think of it!
When I travelled to Taiwan maybe 15 years ago to see family, I remember all the birds and butterflies were different! Seems pretty obvious, but I really hadn't noticed before. So later, I moved from the west coast to the east coast of the US, and I found the Merlin app which lets you identify birds (birding for dummies, I call it!). I remember not recognizing a bird song, so I pulled up the app, and it was a cardinal. Seemed like a common bird, but then I read about them and learned 1) they don't migrate 2) they don't exist where I grew up! So that was cool to learn because I had seen them in pictures as a kid, so I knew they existed, I just never realized I had never seen one before moving!
So then, on a recent trip around the world (well, SE Asia and Europe), I used the app a lot to identify all sorts of birds. They were probably all super common birds, but it was really neat to me, since many of them were new for me! (European magpies for example, are really stunning in their coloration, and super common, but I loved seeing them all the time)
I only left the U.S. once and it was for an overnight stay in Vancouver, Canada. In some ways it felt like the rest of the Pacific Northwest and in other ways it was very different. Natural scenery and accent wise it's basically the same as western Oregon and Washington. The architecture was really different from Portland and Seattle though and there were a lot of old historical buildings. The railway system felt futuristic to me and it was lightyears ahead of anything I had used in the American cities I've visited.
