Apparently nobody in Europe believes in ice or chilled drinks.
The drinks at truck stops were always barely cold and half the restaurants put no ice in their drinks and the other half maybe put 3-4 ice cubes total.
And cows. And bicycle rickshaws. Anything with a wheel.
Where would they be without that horn?
The taxi driver was taking us from the airport to our destination when he just stopped in the middle of the road. On the other side, a policeman was talking to another taxi driver. Our guy shoved the cop, the other driver shoved the cop, both taxi drivers got back in and drove off. :eek:
Another time, the chauffeur (if you have two nickels to rub together, you have servants in India) was pulling out of the parking space when another driver grazed us going by. He shook his fist, other guy shook his fist, and that was all. No insurance or anything.
Driving through town…speed bumps to slow you down.
When I was there, they were very friendly and accomodating. They did stare some but I think they were just curious. My skin tone is slightly lighter than a marshmallow.
What else? Hmm, some really delicious food but a board of health inspector would have a heart attack seeing the prep area. Very very little garbage—they recycle everything they can and animals eat rinds and other refuse. Really bad air quality. Blackouts and brownouts. Hand powered water pumps on street corners so the homeless could drink and bathe.
My wife and I traveled through central Europe (Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Switzerland) in '94, traveling with a choir group that my in-laws were in.
I still remember checking into the hotel we stayed in, in Vienna. During the trip, we would only be in any particular city (and hotel) for one or two days, so one of the things we found ourselves doing was checking out the TV, just to see if there were any stations in English (nearly always, it was either CNN International, or Sky News).
So, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and I turn on the TV in the room, and start channel surfing. And, there, lo and behold, was a particularly explicit porno film, right at a very exciting point in the “story.” 
How clean Zurich, Switzerland is. No graffiti, no trash in the street gutters, even the cars had zero body damage or scrapes. Germany was a little less clean and France was similar to here in Chicago.
Another little detail was that all four wheels on shopping carts swiveled. You could move a cart laterally and more easily slide over to let someone pass. It’s brilliant and I’ve never seen that here in the US where only the front casters swivel.
The vaguely phallic towing hitches on European vehicles.
Ahem. The phrase is “Horn OK Please”
First time on continent of Europe, the boat Newcastle-Bergen stopped in Stavanger long enough to get off and walk around. I noyiced a fascinating door-knob, and walked down the street looking at the doorknobs of the shops.
My first was at 10 from New York to the Congo so just about everything surprised me. That it was super warm in November. The wide boulevards. The bamboo, cactus and palm trees. The Ivory Market. The Congolese Army camped across the street. The empty supermarkets (just like today, but worse.) I was given money for my birthday, went to a department store, and found nothing to buy.
I first went to the UK in the early 1980s, to London. I booked an inexpensive hotel for a few days, before I went to continental Europe.
Upon check-in at my London hotel, I was handed a key–an ordinary key, like we used before keycards and such came into play years later. Except it was attached to a rod about a foot long, and weighed about a pound. “Um, how do I put this in my pocket?” I asked.
The desk clerk knew I was coming from North America, where guests always kept their hotel keys on them, even when leaving the hotel for the day, until check-out, when they handed the key back. The desk clerk kindly explained that when I went off-premises, I was to drop the key at the porter’s desk over there–he pointed to the porter’s desk–and when I returned, I was to show them this card–which he provided, and had my name and room number on it–and I could retrieve my key.
Weirdly (for me, anyway) the system worked. And as I would find later in Europe, the system was the same: an ordinary, mechanical key, with a huge attachment, that basically prevented pocketing the key and leaving, a porter’s desk (or in some cases, just the front desk) where you were to leave the key, and a card that allowed you to retrieve it when you returned from your day out.
At that point, I had been to Los Angeles, and New York City, and Montreal, always with friends, and we had always been able to keep our keys. Having to leave them at a desk, and having to show hotel-issued ID to get them back, certainly surprised me when I first visited London.
I don’t quite remember where I first encountered them, but the kind of squat toilets that are only a hole in the ground with two handles to hold on to in Mediterranean countries. It may be that i first encountered them in Italy in the late 70s, but I definitely remember them at the camping site I was to in 1989 in South France.
A similar toilet issue I sometimes encountered on Mediterranean islands (last time at Rhodes last year): toilets where you were not supposed to flush the paper, but put it in a basket next to the toilet. It’s a bit icky, but I understand it for islands with a dry climate and poor provision of water.
This is wonderful ! Concerning my first trip abroad – from my home country (UK), with a group from my school for ten days’ holiday in the Netherlands: I have to be boring, and confess to – so far as I remember – not finding much highly shockingly / surprisingly / fascinatingly new; not even doorknobs ! The Netherlands and its people struck me as thoroughly pleasant and agreeable, though I could have wished for a perceivedly more exciting destination for first venture abroad; but (maybe I was a rather unimaginative kid) it felt to me a great deal like home, except that people communicated in a funny language.
One curious novelty which I recall: at the beach at Scheveningen there was, at the top of a high building, an ever-changing illuminated electric signboard; after dark, this showed a continuing variety of news headlines, domestic and foreign, about all kinds of things. Between English and my schoolboy German, I could take a fair shot at – not always accurately – figuring out written Dutch. One evening, there appeared on this device a terse message (this was in 1963, by the way) which I deciphered as “In Iraq, three soldiers and one civilian have been tortured to death”. The thought of this, gave me rather horrid “grues” for the rest of the evening. I now know that schoolkid me, guessed wrongly about this item of info – rendering “verordeld ter dood” as " ‘ordealed’ to death". In fact, the verb “verordelen” means “condemn”: disagreeable for those on the receiving end, but hopefully things were not as horrific for them, as my interpretation made it.
God, yes. French campsites in the seventies, you would walk along a row of toilets, looking for the one with a stream of water outside of it. This was the one to avoid, the one with the super-powerful flush; as the flush wasn’t into a bowl, but essentially over a hole in the floor, if it was excessive it would wash straight out of the toilet door. There was a rite of passage associated with this - squatting, wiping and dressing, pulling the flush, realising it was the supercharged variety, grabbing for the door - and realising too late that the door opened inwards…
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Sangahyando mention of Netherlands reminds me, after going to every country in Europe, finishing up in Netherlands, there are still new wonders – the steep narrow ladder-like stairways in the vertical hotels. And the never ending ringing of bells.
On my folks first trip to Germany, when the wall was coming down, they ordered a beer and it was actually cool, the glass sweating. They saw another patron, presumably a local resident, with his hands around his glass, warming it up.
simple … every trip, location, culture … they’re basically the same as where you live. so … stop wasting time and money … be content where you live … save your money for retirement. that’s all i gotta’ say.
My first UK train ride - without someone else getting off, I never would have known that at a station, you would have to lower the window, reach out and turn the handle, and only then would the door open.
At a German autobahn rest stop: insert a Euro into the turnstile to use the (spotless) restroom/washroom/toilet, and receive a 0.5 Euro coupon for use in the cafe.
(and if you want to experience the Indian streets - Youtube has lots of videos of a cameraman roaming random streets in various large Indian cities)
Bill Bryson wrote about finding German naturist magazines in hotel lobbies, on his first trip to Europe in the 70s. What bemused him, he wrote, was that they were in no manner pornographic - no sex depicted, just some clean cut couple going about their daily activities - loading the dishwasher, reading, folding laundry - while completely nude.
On my first trip to Europe, I was pleasantly startled to see nude sunbathers in a public park in Leipzig.
What is cheaper in Europe than the US?
In 1967 we went to Montreal for the Expo 67 World Fair. When you cross the border from Vermont into Quebec, you find yourself in the Canadian equivalent of Hooterville. Very rural without any picturesque charm.
What struck me was the fondness for a certain bright shade of turquoise. Cars, houses, barns, and lots of other objects in this obnoxious color.
Fifty years later, the area is still about as rural as it was, but the turquoise seems to have gone out of fashion.
At the time (or shortly before), turquoise was a very popular color. Our kitchen had turquoise appliances in the late 50s.
When I went to France, I was surprised that people thought I was French, even when I spoke. Turns out my HS French teacher was a stickler for pronunciation so I had a good French accent.
I’m just curious, do you have a large, 2,000 year old amphitheater, a 30m tall aqueduct, a volcano, 4,000 year old pyramids, camels, wild kangaroos, castles, chateaus, priceless art, artifacts and architecture all in your local town? That’s amazing, if you do. If not, you’re going to need to travel to experience any of that. People who love traveling don’t consider it a “waste of time and money”. Places are not all “basically the same”. That’s the whole point of traveling.