Mexico, mid-70s. We got lost, drove out of the tourist area and I was shocked to see beggars on the street, mostly disabled people. At the time that was not something I’d seen in my (limited) travels in the US. Also restaurants with no windows or screens and with flies buzzing all over. Commercial auto repair shops that were dirt floor sheds.
I was 15 and pretty naive.
Sofia (Bulgaria) around 2006 - we had a four-course dinner for the equivalent of $10 - excellent meal! $2 would get you a long distance in a taxi - I don’t know how cab drivers were able to afford gas.
These are all mostly small things:
My first trip to Canada: was surprised by how clean the highways were, although that could have been as much an artifact of how the light hit them at the different latitude as it was the lack of litter.
My first (and only) trip to Mexico: was surprised at how few of the syllables I could understand of spoken Spanish despite my 6 years of classes in it.
My first trip to England: was surprised by how mainstream ketchup as a condiment was: I thought I’d be as looked down upon when asking for ketchup for my chips as people in Chicago supposedly are when asking for ketchup on a hot dog (although I hear that elitism is overblown as well.)
My first (and only) trip to Spain: was fascinated at the very tiny fences - not much more than 6 inches high – blocking off the greenery at the Paseo Del Prado which make the things its enclosed in seem extra-dainty and also sort of like the fence used to be taller but was almost overwhelmed by centuries of growth. Whereas in reality I know they’re probably relatively modern and built at that height to not distract from the view while also being a psychological bar against stepping on the grass.
No really. I was surprised how littered your highways were. It reminds me of the time I went to Reno on a conference and drove to Virginia City on an afternoon off. All these gorgeous viewpoints along the way that we stopped at were littered with beer cans and Coke bottles and just general shit: beautiful scenery with utter garbage strewn about. Sad really.
My first trip to Europe was with Frommer’s “Europe on $5 a Day”, and you could get a bed and two meals for 5 bucks, even in Stockholm or Geneva.
Staying in a nice hostel with two filling meals is easy on $20 in Ukraine.
I’m a little doubtful of this, and I lived forty years in Toronto. Drinks are iced just as in the United States (i.e. lots of ice); and French may appear on highway signs and government buildings, but is extremely-rarely-to-never used in daily life by Torontonians.
Could you supply some cites to bolster your assertions?
My first two trips abroad were dashes over the Canadian border. Vancouver is effectively an extension of the Seattle-Portland megalopolis. Their McDonald’ses had McPizza about a month before America did, and didn’t keep it much longer. I’d love to visit Tijuana, but doubt I will during this presidency.
My third trip abroad, when I was a lot older, was to Korea. I’ve been here for a decade now, on and off, and I really love it. One thing that freaked me out (and still does) is that they do not sell clothes my size here. Custom tailors are reasonably priced, but even if I lost a lot of weight, their shoe sizes stop at about 9 1/2. Medical care and prescription drugs are a lot cheaper here; beer and alcohol are a bit more expensive. Bathrooms are a surprise; the whole room, including the toilet and sink, is the shower stall. Which is why athlete’s foot is so rampant here. Mattresses are hard as a rock. Foreigners aren’t allowed to own phones or bank accounts until they’ve been here a while (I had to cash my first paycheck at a sleazy massage joint; long story).
I don’t particularly recall finding the Netherlands – on my first visit, or subsequent ones – particularly big on bell-ringing; perhaps I’m just unobservant.
On a bells-type tangent – a difference between England and its Low-Countries neighbours, is that church bell-ringing in the former, is about intricate mathematically-ordered patterns of bell notes, which just happen to sound nice: the Continental thing of public carillons with bells playing tunes, is thought by English bell-ringing folk to be totally crass and vulgar and missing-the-point.
I gather that nudism / naturism has indeed long had a big following in Germany, and with official blessing there. The Nazis were perfectly OK with it; in fact, I believe, encouraged it. Subsequently, while Communist East Germany was in many ways a distinctly repressive and unpleasant place in which to live – the authorities had no problem with nudism, for those whose thing it was.
A recollection (at second-hand – I was not present “there and then”) to do with railfan matters. There was (in fact, it’s still going strong) a narrow-gauge rail line near Dresden, worked by steam locomotives; which happened to run through a nudist colony. When British railway enthusiasts – visiting East Germany to relish its numerous steam locos still in daily service – travelled on this line; they were often in an acute state of nerves, perceiving a “double whammy” of likely getting into trouble: as suspected spies (as often happened to camera-equipped railfans in the Communist bloc); and as perverts. They weren’t familiar with the local deal concerning nudism.
And you are right to do so - I wouldn’t take driving tips from any Italian. In fact, I got an automated ticket for (accidentally) running a red light in Carovigno (about 30 minutes drive from Martina Franca) so they’re obviously trying to clamp down on it.
My biggest surprises when I first visited the US about 30 years ago were (a) how sweet the bread rolls and butter tasted that they served you in restaurants and (b) how many people were drinking either beer or coke in smart restaurants, rather than wine.
Also, asking the hotel concierge in Chicago where the nearest store was, and their shock that I was planning to walk there - they wanted to order me a taxi (it was a ten minute walk).
Ah, another! In the same hotel (Marriott), at breakfast they had an omelette-making station. Nothing strange there, except they poured the ‘omelette mixture’ out of a carton. First time I’d ever encountered eggs which didn’t come out of a shell.
On my first trip to Paris, my room was in the top floor of a hotel. The elevator was triangular, and so tiny that I couldn’t fit both of my bags in it, plus myself. I had to leave one bag downstairs, to be retrieved later.
I loved going to French supermarkets. One entire aisle of yogurt, another for cheese, and strange foods that I never saw back home. I tried as many as I could.
And the tiny cars, especially in Italy!
I had taken a course in German before visiting Vienna. But I discovered that though the Viennese could understand me, I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. It seems I had learned the German they speak in Germany, and the Austrian dialect is quite different.
One thing that totally baffled me was the lack of shower curtains in some hotels, especially in France. Instead, I found glass partitions that had a gap on the bottom, allowing water to go onto the bathroom floor.
And I won’t go into my 4-day adventure after my wallet was stolen in the Madrid airport, as soon as I arrived.
My first trip abroad was to Malaysia, in 2003 I think. I had very good first impressions of Malaysia - the awesome KL airport, vast clean roads, fast-moving traffic, shiny new buildings. I had a guest room in a massive condominium called Sri Wangsaria in Bangsar. The condo apartment was impressive in its own right, with cavernous rooms from which you could clearly see the Petronas Towers fully lit up at night. Malaysian culture is an amalgamation of Indian, Chinese and ethnic Malay, while the state religion is Islam, which makes for an interesting cultural feel not experienced in other Muslim countries.
Malaysia also had fast internet, swanky malls (that had just started selling digital cameras) and even a very popular restaurant chain from India. Now for me, coming out of poor and congested India at that time, all this display of wealth was amazing. But as the weeks passed I also realized Malaysia had a darker side: creeping Islamization. Preachers would walk up to me and offer to educate me on the Koran, and when I declined, would sometimes whisper something in Malay in my ears - I never understood, but I am sure they were not saying anything nice. Non-Muslims were considered second-rate citizens in Malaysia. The pollution was terrible and so was the heat, much like India. Overall an interesting trip, and I’d love to visit again.
I don’t know if there’s a cite for “how much ice was standard for soft drinks served in fast food restaurants in the 90s, compare Canada to the US”, but I have a strong suspicion that it’s not so much a Canada/US thing as it is me coming from the southern US where the brutal heat demands as much ice as the cup will hold. I’ve since adjusted my ice requirements, thanks.
The mention of French was for street signs and packaging and the like. I don’t hear a lot of French spoken in Toronto, no (I’ve been in Toronto for the past 15 years).
On the subject of Germany and nudity… This wasn’t something I actually saw in Germany, but my aunt/uncle/cousins live in Germany and brought a German magazine back to the US when they came to visit my Grandparents. Thumbing through that magazine I noticed an ad for some sort of pain reliever. It was a fairly typical ad showing a man with his back to the camera with areas highlighted to illustrate “back pain”. Except the man was nude, and the top part of his buttocks were visible in the photo. You’d never see that in the US but I gather it’s perfectly normal in Germany.
I didn’t really see this on my first trip abroad to the UK, but my first visit to France was my first introduction to ridiculously, absurdly tiny elevators in continental Europe.
The hotel elevator door opened, I stepped in, and hit my toe on the far wall of the elevator. The thing was literally like maybe 24 inches deep, probably smaller. And barely the width of the elevator doors. You could fit maybe 4 healthy American men in there (not obese or even overweight) and we were packed tightly.
The kicker? The elevator capacity placard said “6 people”.
I wouldn’t have given the ad a second thought at all. In a way, advertising in Germany has even become more prudish since the 70s. In those days, you frequently saw TV commercials for soap or other cosmetic articles with topless or completely nude women, at day time. I surely liked those as a kid. You don’t see such plain nudity anymore in commercials, but I suspect that’s more a consequence of feminism (avoiding exploitation of women as objects) than of prudery.
The first time in Hungry I was was surprised to encountered a paternoster, Eastern Europe’s ‘Elevator of Death’
They are also still present in some buildings in Germany. Though new constructions have been outlawed, existing ones can still operate as long as they are maintained properly and according to law.
I visited England for the first (and only) time in 2005. We stayed in a hotel in downtown London. I was surprised at how small the hotel room was; how narrow the hallways and doorways are compared to the US. I was also surprised that the traffic lanes are much narrower than those in the US; the bus we rode on passed other vehicles at what seemed like inches away. Also they serve soft drinks without ice. And of course the different terms; an elevator is a lift; you don’t wait in line, you wait on queue, etc.
Thanks for the explanation. 