[ SECRET POST #2690 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2690 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[My Little Pony: Equestria Girls movie]


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[Star Trek: The Next Generation/Reginald Barclay]


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04.
[Dark Souls]


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05.
[Call the Midwife]


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06.
[The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim]


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07.
[The Thing. Inception. EverymanHYBRID. Adventure Time]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 015 secrets from Secret Submission Post #384.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

I read this article: http://mentalfloss.com/article/55140/10-japanese-travel-tips-visiting-america

and was curious what kinds of things you guys noticed when you've gone to another country.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

- People eating at all hours and not at designated times (morning/lunch between 12-2pm, dinner after 7).
- Nurses keeping their scrubs to go home.
- US bakeries are full of cakes covered in fondant
- What Americans call bread is a travesty
- you can buy wine in stalls off the road in Germany. My (German) friend had a taste, it was already dark out, and the wine was so bitter that she emptied her glass in the grass when the guy had his back turned.
- when you stay long enough on the Tube in London, you can learn what the automated voice says because she says it at every stop and you can hear it in the station at the same time. "Mind the gap" still haunts me.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Why is wearing scrubs to go home odd? I buy my scrubs myself and it would be odd to go to work in a different outfit just to change right away. If we're talking the Operating Room scrubs that are usually provided by the hospital, then yeah that's a little weird. But most nurses/hospital staff purchase their own scrubs, so you may as well just wear them to and from work.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

In my country nurses don't buy their scrubs, they're provided by the hospital. So they change in locker rooms in the hospital, and change back to go home. They only buy the shoes, but they stay in the lockers as well, to avoid contamination (that and white crocs don't go well with everything).

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[rubbertea]

german people seem to consider jaywalking a serious crime. when you do it they look at you like you just shot someone.

italians drive like they're in the walking dead. it's especially bad in sicily. in my experience the only place that comes close in terms of bad driving is rural burundi. not the kind of thing you'd expect from a first world country.

swedish people seem to avoid physical and eye contact whenever possible. they stand ten meters apart from each other when waiting for the bus, and they prefer to stand rather than sit next to someone else.

spain is very loud in the morning and at night but very quiet in the afternoon. i guess that's because everyone is napping.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Haha, a friend once told me she jaywalked in Germany, someone looked at her and said: "you must be French."

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[rubbertea]

lmao

they take it so seriously that i'm sure some of us do it just to piss them off

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Sweden sounds like a place I should have been born in.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[icecheetah]

Rome is terrible for the driving thing. I was there on a school trip and the teachers were literally guiding us across the roads WHILE THERE WERE STILL CARS on the road! Because that's how it's apparantly done in rome.

Another thing I noticed in Rome is that there is a serious lack of public toilets. I won't go into too much detail on that, but I eventually found a MacDonalds that had a disgusting toilet that didn't even have a working light.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Hmm, don't know about the jaywalking. I mean every kid here does it, especially when it's at an intersection and your train is coming up, but you practially never do it over streets with more than 2 lanes, because germany is a country where we still have more people than cars and damn if every car owner doesn't think that they are a rightful god.

Now in sweden it was the extreme opposite. Every car waited for me to cross the street to the point where I almost felt stressed by the pressure. But then I guess they usually saw far less people there (it was in more rural area).

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Traffic is scary in mainland Europe. As an American, I agree with the article. We have very good driving manners. It was quite jarring to the see the opposite in cities like Paris. The roundabouts are a nightmare. I am so glad I wasn't driving at the time because I had my hands covering my eyes going, "Are we out yet? Are we?" In Paris the fine to park on the wrong part of the street is greater than parking on the sidewalk. So, you'll see people on occasion jump the sidewalk with their cars for a quick park. I was warned to be careful walking around corners in case someone jumped the sidewalk and didn't see me.

I never got used to people bringing in their pets into restaurants in France. Not outside on sidewalk cafes but inside the buildings. I didn't think that was sanitary.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[kallanda_lee]

I found Parisians to be exceptionally aggressive drivers. It's not that bad in a lot of other European cities. That being said, most our cities are simply not built to handle the volume of traffic they get today.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Parisians are, thankfully, the worst of the bunch. Although drivers in Marseilles are pretty bad too. In my turf, people are so chill that when the light turns green, they still wait.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[feotakahari]

Dave Barry once said that in most of Europe, people drive on the right side of the road, except in Britain, where they drive on both sides of the road, Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk, and France, where they follow you into the hotel lobby.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[kallanda_lee]

A lot, I've been to many places - anything specific you were interested in?

The tipping this in America is still weird to the rest of us, but I think I got the hang or it.

Random things:

Apparently you need to "book" train tickets in India or some parts anyway. Like days or weeks in advance.

How polite/safe one is in traffic really does depend on the country and even the city.

It still baffles me that in most places they'll understand English.

Haggling: there are places where this is common, and expected. You will pay way too much if you don't. Strangely enough, haggling sometimes works in places you don't expect it. I've once managed to haggle successfully in the USA because because the saleswoman was probably just confused by me and thought it was custom where I lived or something.

You really cant understand Hungarian even if you speak 10 other languages because nothing is similar.

Alternatively, some language families do understand each other quite well, even though they're officially other languages.

There are towns in places like Greece that are basically ghost town outside of tourist season. You can have a bustling tourist nightlife there one day, then it could be empty two weeks later.

Different countries have very different attitudes about discussing the following: religion, who you vote for, how much you make. So unless you're sure, avoid the topics.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[diet_poison]

Out of curiosity, where are you from?

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[icecheetah]

Swiss trains are more polite than and speak better english than British Trains (they are also multilingual).
Swiss mince is horrible.
It's better to try english first than to just try and rely on small scraps of french and german without seeing if the shopkeeper knows english (probably doesn't apply everywhere, but this also applies in france).

In American shops you don't know how much you'll have to pay until you reach the till because of sales tax.

It is surprisingly hard to get Pizza in italy.
Rome hotel standards can be awful (another gross story).

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Odd, I had tons of pizza in Italy.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

- European food service is SLOW. But I feel like that's because - based purely on observation - it's more of an activity in Europe. The food quality was, in turn, way better. You have no idea how hard it was to go out to eat after getting back.

"Our special today is something fried, something fried, something super sized..."

Me: *Weeps*

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[diet_poison]

Only ever traveled in Costa Rica (well, and Canada sort of, but not extensively). I'm from the US.

There was a lot that was different, but also a lot that wasn't. As far as culture, the things that stuck out the most were probably:

+I think this applies to a lot of Latin America, but two women or a woman and a man kiss each other on the cheek when greeting, even when meeting one another. It's not usually a real kiss though, more like a swoop in the air next to their face.
+People put a lot of sugar in their coffee. A lot. When I asked for black coffee, one lady looked at me like I'd sprouted another ear. (And this is a country that grows some of the best coffee!)
+The word "gringo/a" is not a slur like it is in Mexico. It's just a descriptor. It basically means "US person". There was even a guy of Mexican descent in our study group; he grew up in the US and spoke fluent English with an American accent, and so they called him a gringo.
+When people say you eat rice and beans with every meal, you forreal eat it with every meal, including breakfast. I can't complain, though, because that shit is delicious down there. :)

(man I want to go back)

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[icecheetah]

Rice and beans with every meal, including breakfast, sounds heavenly to me.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[kallanda_lee]

"I think this applies to a lot of Latin America, but two women or a woman and a man kiss each other on the cheek when greeting, even when meeting one another. It's not usually a real kiss though, more like a swoop in the air next to their face".

Do you not do this in (I presume) America at all? I'm so used to smooch-a-gogo. Depending on where I am I'll give anything between one and three kisses. I don't even know the rules anymore, I just go with it.

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of food in Japan is packaged. Seriously, they have so much packaging and plastic and stuff you have to open!

There are vending machines in Japan that sell hot drinks in cans. We also found a vending machine that sold little amulets and religious trinkets.

Japanese people are very polite. I learned this when I lost my wallet (and passport!!!) on the shinkansen, and someone actually found it and returned it to me. If this was my capital city, that passport would be gone.

A lot of people still smoke in Japan. We went to a McDonald's and it had an upstairs section where people were allowed to smoke inside. Their McDonald's food is also a lot nicer than here - it's very neat, similar to the picture.

People also ride bikes everywhere in Japan, or take the train. We passed a two story "parking garage" just for bikes! People do drive cars, but not as often as taking public transport.

At the moment, Japan is also in a bad way economically, so it wasn't unusual to see homeless guys lying around in Tokyo. :(

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Visiting Korea:

PEople say Koreans are bad drivers, but they're actually ninja-level skilled--they're just CRAZY drivers.
--also the food delivery scooters are the worse. They think they own both the road and the sidewalk and they will mow you down

A group of people walking together will walk shoulder-to-shoulder, always, so you've got like 6 people blocking off the entire sidewalk +part of the road

People are very nice and willing to help, but they're usually not actually very...helpful in their help. I speak some Korean, and EVERYONE I ask for directions tries to help me but they're usually really bad at asking for directions.

Personal space? Pffft, that's for Westerners. No need to apologize if you bump someone in the street, no need to be shy about being packed together in a bus, no need for middle-aged-ladies to be shy about petting my hair or my skin and marveling at my exotic white-girl-ness.

Everything is bland or spicy, and there's only like 3 spices that are in EVERYTHING

Sweet bread. Think it looks savory (like maybe there's a hot dog in there)? WRONG, it's sugary!

Re: Things you noticed when you traveled to a different country

[(Anonymous)]

Driving on freeways is sooo slooow.