There’s an intersection in Glasgow where the shops on three of the corners are KFC, McD’s and Pizza Hut. (Just checked it on Google Maps street view; I’m sure one of those three - the McD’s? - was a Dunkin’ Donuts when I was there 22 years ago.)
There was a Burger King in Trondheim when I was there in '92. (Checked Google Maps again - it’s still there, if not in the same spot then very close.)
Those were the only ones I remember seeing.
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IME, you can find McDs and BKs in many urban/urban-ish places in Western Europe, but why would you want to? A good part of the fun of traveling is trying local food, isn’t it?
<cite, sort of, anecdotal> Burger Kings in Norway McDonald’s joints in Norway
</cite sort of, anecdotal>
Corn meaning sweetcorn? Well, yes… is that a thing? It’s one of the core ingredients of a bunch of pizzas here (UK). Even with all my Dope years, this is the first time I’ve heard that might be weird.
My stupid question is about people living in countries with a land border. Does it feel entirely unremarkable to pop to another country? Like, if you live close to the Canadian border, say, would you just bob across for dinner in that charming little bistro? Does it feel a bit weird being in another country?
Growing up in an island nation (to all intents and purposes) going abroad was a big deal, requiring a journey and planning. I’m sure this is one of the man reasons the UK has such a bizarre attitude to the rest of Europe - getting there was always such a faff. Things have changed, sure, but I’m old enough to remember the isolation.
The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s.
The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s.
The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s.
Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.
Piggyback stupid question: how big are the supermarkets in areas where people shop every day?
I ask because it *would *be overwhelming to shop at a US suburban mega huge supermarket every day. Even if I just want one or two things, there’s a huge overstimulating sea of sights and sounds and smells and samples…it’s designed to make you stay an hour or more, not grab and dash. (And I’m sure this is entirely intentional and well studied to maximize profit based on American buying habits.)
The little Ethnic markets we have in the big cities, on the other hand, I feel like I can run in for stuff for tonight’s dinner, and be out in a decent amount of time and not feel bombarded.
I’ve noticed that I do tend to do more piecemeal shopping now that I live in the city and shop at physically smaller stores. I still don’t shop every day, but I’m more likely to do one big shopping day and supplement it with other smaller trips during the week. And I further find that I don’t spend as much this way. I don’t waste as much produce, hoping the avocados I buy on Sunday will make it until Friday Taco Night, I just wait until Wednesday or Thursday to buy the avocados. And stuff doesn’t sit getting freezer burned in my freezer because I thought when I was shopping it looked good, but then we just never had a taste for actually cooking and eating it.
Charley, yes, corn/sweetcorn on pizza is strange to Americans. Here’s a list of available toppings from my local Chicago’s Pizza, one of the local chains in Chicago:
Pepperoni
Chicken Breast
Onions
Artichoke
Italian Sausage
Anchovies
Mushrooms
Broccoli
Bacon
Shrimp
Green Peppers
Zucchini
Canadian Bacon
Tomatoes
Fresh Garlic
Ground Beef
Black or Green Olives
Jalapeño Peppers
Roast Beef
Spinach
Banana Peppers
Ham
Pineapple
Shrimp, Zucchini and Roast Beef are going to make a bunch of posters say, “wait…what?!” They’re not very common pizza toppings. Chicken and pineapple are very controversial as pizza toppings, but I happen to think they’re delicious, and they’re pretty common now, at least in my area. You can find frozen supermarket pizza with chicken now; not sure if I’ve seen any with pineapple.
Coo, well I never! That’s genuinely surprising, it’s one of the defaults here, and one of the most common ways we eat corn, to boot. Broccoli, though? See that’s weird :).
(France) For most people I know, this is not the case. I think I’ve only known retired people to do that, and even then it’s not everyday but more every other day, for bread or fresh stuff/spur of the moment desire. Most people go once or twice a week to the supermarket. Then it all depends on if you live someplace where you still have little shops or a farmer market.
Our own fridge is on the small size, about 4 cubic feet, but even then we only do a weekly trip to the supermarket. We use it to stock dairy produces and left-overs.
Oh, I missed that one! Yeah, that’s pretty weird for here, too. I’d put it on the “wait…what?” list. Not unheard of, but one of the more creative options.
Hey bub you have a land border. It’s 60 miles north of my house.
Nowadays the border between Ireland and the UK is trivial, almost unnoticable. You don’t get a welcome to NI or welcome to UK sign, just a sign indicating the county. The only difference anyone would notice straight off is that the speed signs on the roads change from KPH to MPH as you go north. Northern Ireland isn’t that different to the Republic for the most part. Different currency, some different shop chains, and more British looking road signs, markings and street railings etc. Political murals and flags are another thing that would indicate to someone they were in a different jurisdiction but really there’s not a whole lot in it to me. Place names in the Republic always have their name in Irish too while that’s quite uncommon in NI outside of Derry and Newry in my experience.
However, when I was a kid, going north was a very big deal. There were British Army checkpoints at every major road into Northern Ireland. At one point my family were up north every weekend and it was always a rather stressful event passing the checkpoints even though nothing too remarkable ever happened. Seeing British soldiers out on patrol, including hiding in my uncle’s fields was another things I wouldn’t have seen down south. Also, a lot of stores, products differed quite a bit compared to nowadays. I suppose we were less globalised but it really felt like a different country when I was a kid. Products from the Republic are now more routinely available in NI stores and vice versa.
In Ireland, gonna guess the UK is similar, our fridges are smaller than US behemoths but you can still fit plenty in them. We have supermarkets here that wouldn’t be too unfamiliar to an American, just smaller floor space, more tightly packed here, and we don’t have those mobility scooters that seem to be common in midwestern at least supermarkets. Sadly individual fruit and veg, butchers, bakers etc. aren’t as common as they once were, a victim of the big supermarkets’ dominance.
Places where people shop every day, or most days, would be cities with lots of local shops - a baker’s, a butcher’s, a deli, whatever. Places where people live in apartments right in the centre of a city, or perhaps a small village/town where everything is in walking distance. If you want some food, you can go out and buy it in a 5 or 10 minute walk, so it’s not a big deal.
That kind of culture is being replaced in most places though, by big, modern, out-of-town supermarkets, but if you live in a city and don’t have a car, and maybe live in an old apartment block with lifts that either don’t work or aren’t there at all, then you don’t want to be buying a week’s worth of food in one go.
I think for vast swathes of middle America (and middle England), who are used to living in car-dependent suburbia, the idea that people might live in a city where everything is accessible on foot is very alien.
I’ve often wondered about this, too. Europe has loads of places where the international border runs literally down the middle of city streets.
Example 2 (left side of street is Holland, right side is Germany)
Example 3 (camera is in Italy, train station ahead is in Slovenia; border runs along the line with the plant troughs)
The idea of just strolling into a different country is pretty weird - especially since with the EU and the Schengen agreement there is literally no border control in any of these cases I just showed.
Yes, I have seen dead bodies in the Ganges. We went down at sunrise to see the day arrive. I also saw dead dog carcasses floating by, right beside where people were brushing their teeth and bathing their babies in the same river. I found most surprising that ladies came and bathed in something not exactly like, but not unlike a sari. In the water it was much more revealing than any bikini, that’s for sure!
Squat toilets do indeed come in flushing porcelain models, tres modern. But the real beauty of a squat toilet, even when flushed with a bucket of water, is that even with zero maintenance they are very hygienic to use as nothing but the soles of your shoes touch anything in the room. So even if it’s little more than a dank dark squatter, you can use it without much worry. Oh, and it’s actually a much healthier posture for doing your business.
As a Canadian, it’s not much to go to the US for a day to shop or see a sporting event/concert, etc. Time was we didn’t even need a passport, nor them! Since 911 and homeland security it’s a little harder now. But tons of traffic goes back and forth every day without incident.
In Asia corn is an ice cream flavour, even at the Baskin Robbins. I knew a Polish immigrant who had never seen a banana until on the plane coming here! She said her father still, many years later would never, ever eat corn, as in Poland it was a feed grain and only given to livestock!
LOL! This bit me in the tuckus when I went to Korea. I ordered a pizza and it had corn on it. I was like, “WTF is this?” Now, I didn’t actually say it to the Koreans because I understood it was their country, their rules. But among my American friends there was much pointing and giggling.
I’ve actually had a lot of Koreans get stressed out when they see me because they think I will want western style things, and I have to reassure them that I accept the Korean way. One time I went into a restaurant and had a lady get upset because she had no chairs and didn’t know how to communicate this in English. I let her know I spoke Korean and I accepted the Korean custom of sitting on the floor, and she was sooo relieved. I guess she expected me to be one of those ugly Americans stereotypes.
We’ll generally have a few in big UK supermarkets- I broke myself last year, and wound up using them for a few weeks. Up 'til then, I’d never even noticed they were there, and the staff didn’t seem to know how to work them, so I guess they just sit there out of the way most of the time.
We tend to use the ‘half full of water’ toilets btw, though the full-flush-only ones are starting to be phased out.
I live in a dodgy suburb of a decent size city in England, and I could quite easily do all my shopping within walking distance at little bakeries, grocers etc, without ever setting foot in a supermarket, if I really wanted to (I do buy most fresh food at them, it’s mainly frozen food and tins that are cheaper at the supermarket). The streets full of little shops are definitely becoming rarer though.
Maybe the big Tescos have them here or maybe the other supermarkets have them hidden away somewhere. But there’s always a few of them parked prominently in the lobby of Giant Eagle and other similar stores in the US.
I need to represent for zucchini on pizza. It’s my favorite topping! The pies I’ve been making lately are laden with zucch, summer squash and sometimes eggplant. Like this here.
And I don’t understand lingering! Sure I read in there, but I’m super fast no matter what. I’m lucky I guess. But it’s the toilet -why would you want to linger? But my grandmother still squatted until the day she died, albeit with some help to get back up. It’s is much better on your system because of the pressure you put on your belly.
Personally, I think it’s kind of icky that we have the toilet in the same room as the place we brush and shower, and i’ve lived in the States most of my life. In India, the only thing in the toilet is the toilet. The bath/shower is in another room. Makes more sense to me, more hygienic, etc.
I have never seen a dead body in the Ganga, but I was told about them. I have bathed in the Ganga, though, many many years ago. Washing my sins away in the water doesn’t really seem much different to me than eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood.
I don’t go to Canada for dinner, but it is easy to plan a weekend trip to Canada. It’s quite nice, except for the customs line.
Paying extra for the individual ketchup packets is nothing new in Germany - back when they opened the first Burger King in Berlin, they had the packets for free in the beginning. Then customers started stuffing their pockets with the packets - I guess they were just not used to having “free” ketchup, and would take fistfuls of them home. It’s not like ketchup is wildly expensive in Germany, so I have no idea why this was so common to do - forcing them to charge extra.
Same goes for filling your own cup with Coke or whatever - don’t think I ever saw that in Germany and they probably fear people would come in with plastic jugs and fill them.
It has been ages since I have last been in Germany, but one thing I noticed as an American is that Germans would rarely, if ever, clean their own tables and toss the paper wrappings and cups in the trash. They would just leave everything and they had full time staff come around and clean it for them. Not that every American is considerate in this respect, but I think most do at least take their tray with all the paper containers etc. and dump it in the trash on the way out. Maybe this has changed in Germany in the years since?
That would depend on where within your country you live and which that other country is. For many people in NE Spain, shopping trips to Andorra or Southern France are pretty normal, a day trip to “the country that’s a mall” or to “the country where they just happen to have some stuff that I can’t find so easily down here”. For people in Irún or Hendaye, popping over the border is routine. But for any of us in NE Spain, a trip to Portugal, Gibraltar or over the Ceuta-Morocco border still counts as “heading to exotic lands”. And so is a trip to Biarritz to someone from La Línea de la Concepción (the village just across the line from Gibraltar).
My house is half an hour from the nearest French town, although the road requires a cast-iron stomach which mine is not. To Hendaye about 45’-1h. During this last assignment, my coworkers (who lived in Madrid, Málaga and Castellón de la Plana) kept asking me “you’re not buying cheese?” “why would I? I can get french cheese from the weekly street market, when I’m home! And why the hell are you buying Caprice des Dieux? They sell that in any Carrefour!”
In Spain there are several sizes of supermarkets. The little stores I called sundries are about the same size as a grocer’s or butcher’s; they’re similar to an American convenience store. Then there’s small supermercados where the aisles are too narrow for carts, then the medium-sized ones with aisles large enough for carts, and the places which are in industrial zones and which often form the center of a mall are called hipermercados - these are the ones where a saturday morning trip will see lots of families with children, they’re about the size of American supermarkets. And I’ve never seen a courtesy scooter in one.
Here’s a list of available toppings from my local 
They’re not very common pizza toppings. Chicken and pineapple are very controversial as pizza toppings, but I happen to think they’re delicious, and they’re pretty common now, at least in my area. You can find frozen supermarket pizza with chicken now; not sure if I’ve seen any with pineapple.
