Embarking on a European adventure is like stepping into a dream – the picturesque landscapes, iconic landmarks, and rich history make it a bucket-list destination for many. However, beneath the glossy surface of travel brochures lie the unexpected twists and turns that catch even the most seasoned travelers off guard. But sometimes, it’s the “WTH” moments that become the highlight of the trip, creating lasting memories and stories to share for years to come.
I fell in love with Sweden. But every time I go and visit, I’m still shocked at how many people just lay out and tan. On the sidewalk. Next to this Fika shop. Next to a museum.
Literally, people lay out and tan ANYWHERE and EVERYWHERE in this country.
I’d be walking through Gamla Stan or Djurgården, then BAM out of nowhere, I nearly trip over a lady trying to tan. åh! jag är väldigt ledsen!
In Paris, everything seemed too small: the elevator in our hotel fit two people or one with a suitcase. Rooms had probably 7′ ceilings. Sidewalks felt like they were 3′ wide. Glasses of water were maybe 4 ounces (with a 1L bottle to fill them with). Even doorways and hallways seemed 80% the size I am used to.
I’ve always heard that things are bigger in the US, but I never really understood until I went to Europe.
I was in Italy and wanted to grab a bite and a beer for some lunch. I left the flat and I was flabbergasted to find the entire town was empty. Everything was closed, not even the neighborhood dogs were around!
I was 15 years old, ordering a beer at McDonald’s.
Every night in Spain, around 3 a.m. this MASSIVE fleet of street scrubbers, vacuum-mobiles, and water hoses appeared and cleaned the entire city for about an hour. It was like ~100 people every night just cleaning the city. The following morning, all of Salamanca was spotless. That sh*t was magical.
It was subtle at first, but it eventually boggled my mind how old everything was and it was still integrated into everyday life. Like in the UK, drinking in the pub that had been in the same spot since the 11th Century, or eating dinner at a restaurant in an 18th cathedral. Or in Prague going to a club in a 14th Century stone cellar or staying at a hotel/brewery that had been operating since the 15th Century.
The oldest building in my vicinity is from the 1750s (which is prehistoric by US standards), but, like, someone in Europe sees a building that is half a millennia old that no one is using and they’re like, “Let’s turn this into a disco.” I loved it.
I am from the NY/NJ area and have seen first-hand how out-of-control sporting events can get. Guys, mostly, getting drunk, vandalizing property, throwing cans and bottles, fighting, etc.
So when a group of friends went to Germany for Oktoberfest some years ago, we also wanted to see a football (soccer) game. So we got tickets to see Bayern Munich vs. some other German team in what, I think, was a meaningful game (we went more for the experience vs. being huge fans).
The game is great. I think the score was 5-1, so lots of action. The energy in the stadium was undeniable. Fans singing, jumping around, and yelling for the entire game. Game ends. Munich wins. Begin the march to the subway station.
Virtually an entire stadium, it seemed, excited to go to this one nearest subway stop. There are 4, maybe 5 cops standing at the entrance steps. Uh oh. This is going to be a huge problem. THOUSANDS of people, lots of them intoxicated, heading toward these 5 cops at this one exit. It’s going to be a disaster. Some guys start pissing on a fence within their view. WHAT ARE THEY DOING?! And then, as we watched nervously, the crowd reached the cops and …. just … stopped.
Everyone stopped. No one fought. The guys pissing finished up their business, zipped up and joined the queue. Cops let enough people by to fill the first train, then the rest stopped, and so on and so forth until our group went.
It was incredible. That scene couldn’t happen in America. Maybe this was an anomaly. But picturing an event at MSG, there’s an army of State troopers to keep order, in addition to local cops, undercover cops, event security, etc. and brawls and things still erupt with regularity. This was amazing to us. We still talk about it years later. That was some respectful, organized and orderly sh*t.
In Italy there is virtually no threshold for how much distance should be left between a speeding car and any obstacles (including pedestrians) it is zooming past.
A bus driver will rush down a narrow cobblestone street with about a centimeter to spare between the sides of the bus and any parked cars, walls, ancient monuments, or playing children.
In Scotland, there was a bomb threat at a local gas station. The news anchor that was covering it interviewed locals about how they felt about this terrifying event. EVERY response fell along the lines of “I don’t know much about that, but I’m sure the government is taking care of it…back to my day,” The faith in the government and not wanting to butt in blew my mind.
We were driving through Spain, and to the side of one of the roads, we noticed these MASSIVE bird nests in the high-power electrical towers. They were at least twice the size of eagles nests that I had seen. And there were so many of them!
Then we saw these giant birds in them! We stopped by the side of the road and tried to take some pictures (didn’t have a great zoom lens, sadly). But no one else was stopping. It was so odd. We are accustomed to at least a few people stopping to watch the osprey, eagles, or other birds where I’m from.
So a few days later, we are chatting with a German tourist, and we bring up the birds…
I think she thought we were joking until we pulled out the pictures. Then she started laughing.
Storks. Those are storks. Of course, don’t you know that? They are everywhere and such a nuisance. Don’t you have storks in America?
Well…no?
Then she looked confused. Well, if you don’t have storks, who brings the babies in kids’ stories?
Storks.
Um…how does that work?
And that was when we realized that the story of the storks makes a whole lot more sense when storks are nesting on every chimney, tree, or tall place….
For me, it was a lack of insects in England. Not that they don’t exist but I’m from Michigan with lots of swampy land around me. When I showed up at my dorm and saw there was no screen on my window I was just thinking about all of the bugs that were gonna get in my room. I got one fly the entire month’s stay there.
Paying to use a public restroom. I get why though. Just a horrible feeling if you really had to go and you don’t have any change.
Nudity in broadcast TV was very surprising. It wasn’t even a “necessary for the story” situation, just a margarine commercial with a naked woman swimming in a lake and stepping out of the water to eat some bread. During primetime. I know American TV is kind of prudish that way, but it was a pretty shocking way to learn how different Germany is.
In Spain, everyone appears to be very thin, yet I swear eats a loaf of bread a day.
Going to a soccer game in Italy. When buying a ticket, they needed to know which team I was rooting for to determine where I could sit. Then, during the game, people were setting things on fire.
I lived in Germany for 8 years from 1992-2000 (Ages 4-12). I didn’t realize it until I moved back to the States but there were recycling bins on EVERY street corner. It wasn’t just a green bin and then a trash can, it was a giant blue bin. One section for green glass, one for brown glass, one for clear glass, one for plastic, and one for paper.
Spent a summer in Germany.
The older people in the village seemed super grumpy and mean and would never smile or respond if you said hello or good morning, BUT if you asked them a substantive question, like how to get to the museum, they would spend 15 minutes telling you the fastest way to get there, the scenic way to get there, everything interesting you should do on the way there, why that museum isn’t actually that good and you should go to this other museum instead, all the different ways to get to the better museum, and where their grandmother used to live before the war.
One time in Rome, it started pouring. As I sought shelter, I saw an older man selling one single umbrella. Strange as it was, I needed that umbrella, so I haggled with him and settled on 3 euros (he had the upper hand in that transaction).
I wander over to a coffee shop to dry out for a little bit. When I go to leave, the umbrella is no longer in the bucket by the door. Upset at myself for being so trusting, I head into the rain again. Guess who I see? The same old man selling the same umbrella. I try to confront him about stealing back my umbrella, but he claims not to remember our interaction at all. It’s pouring and I have a number of miles to walk, so I go through the same charade with him again to re-procure the umbrella.
At least this time he took 2 Euro.
Went to Sweden on a vacation package. Stayed at a wonderful historic hotel for part of the trip that had a restaurant inside of it. Part of our package called for a free dinner at the hotel and we had asked that it be the night we arrived.
We arrived and got settled in our room and then went to check out the restaurant. As soon as we walked in, there was no one there, only a hostess. She immediately said they were expecting us and we could sit anywhere. There was no one else in this gorgeous, ornate restaurant. A waiter came out and said they had prepared a special meal for us. We asked why it was so empty and he said the restaurant was closed one day a week and today was that day.
We were shocked, we apologized profusely and told them that we had booked through another company and would have just scheduled it for another day. He said it was no problem and we had some free extras such as wine and dessert. The main course ended up being a huge piece of meat, which we jokingly said must have been because we were big fat Americans. No one rushed us, we had a great time, and after we left they closed the restaurant for the night.
It was a total WTF moment because if you booked something like this in America, they’d either force you to reschedule or just have the restaurant closed with no explanation.
How easy and unencumbered by useless b*llsh*t most things are.
Getting on a 5:30 train from Brussels to Berlin? Show up at 5:20. And get laughed at by the Germans who will finish their beer at exactly 5:28 because they know the walk from the bar to the platform is 1 minute and 57 seconds.
In the states that would require showing up at 3:15 because of at least 4 security checkpoints and 8 lines of people who can’t figure out how an escalator works.
I lived in Spain for 9 months at one point and was trying to get to the supermarket in the middle of a weekday and the entire city center was blocked off. I had to park and walkways and discovered that they were having a giant block party. Kegs and all. Around noon. Celebrating the town’s new garbage trucks.
I love Spain.
This was a few years ago before “chip” credit/bank cards were like “a thing” in the States. But when I stopped in Amsterdam and hopped over to Latvia, I discovered that in both countries, my DEBIT card that needed to be swiped to buy anything was like a weird old relic. Every cashier everywhere gave me a confused look when I handed them my card and they saw it didn’t have a chip. They would, after I politely mentioned it had to be swiped, question whether or not that was even possible with their register. They always looked shocked to discover that the little slat along the side of their credit card thing was to be used to slide a card through. And when it actually worked, they always looked even MORE shocked. That’s the first time I learned “Oh sh*t. Maybe America is behind in a lot of ways.” Because everyone looked at my card as if it were carved out of stone and would pay them in some Flinstones-style currency that they were convinced they couldn’t actually accept. By Day 2 of the trip, even I was like… “You f*cking American a**ho*e with your ancient technology.”
I was doing a study abroad program in the UK but also had to take monthly blood tests for a medication I had been put on before I flew over. I was fully prepared for a laundry list of paperwork and fees to deal with the tests as well as getting these results to my doctor back in the States.
After the first blood test, I went up to the receptionist and asked what I owed. She looked at me with a bit of confusion and said, “Oh, no, you’re fine you can just go.” My doctor also got my blood results in less time than they did when I got them in the States. F*ck our broken healthcare system.
In Venice wanting a coffee. The local café had a menu by the entrance with two prices for take out and seat in. Seat in is more expensive as you pay for the service charges. We were in the mood to continue with roaming around with a coffee, so asked for a coffee to go.
The owner said,
“If you aren’t going to drink the coffee in my café, no coffee for you. Ciao.”
Rented a car and drove around Ireland for a week. One late evening another driver started flashing his lights at me and waving. I realized I had my brights on for a while while I was behind him and was expecting to get b*tched out for it. I stopped to apologize but instead of getting b*tched out for it the other driver was incredibly polite and just wanted to make sure I knew to turn them off.
In the States, you expect road rage for any minor infraction.
I was in Switzerland around Kreutzingen and a homeless guy came up to me and was trying to sell me an old record. I told him I don’t speak German and he responded in English “No problem I speak English also”. It was then that I realized that the majority of us Americans only speak one language and the homeless folks in Europe can speak 2 or 3. Who’s the dummy now…
In Spain, the siesta is super real. I just thought that it was an archaic thing that some people did and some people didn’t. Nope. Everything freaking shuts down for an hour or two. Even in super-touristy places, 99% of shops and businesses shut down.
Went to Paris, and sat down at a cafe by the hotel. It was early lunch but we were starving. Sit, and wait 10 mins for the waiter to say hi. Five more for a drink order, Ten more to get drinks, five more to order food, and 15-20 for the food. 35 until we see him again to order dessert. 15 waiting for dessert. 10 more to get the check after eating dessert. I know he gave us special treatment because we were Americans, he basically ignored the other tables he had and they would yell things at him in French as he went by. It was nuts how laid back the restaurant experience was. But I honestly miss it.
When we were in Paris we wanted to check out the local McDonalds just to see if anything was different. I mostly wanted to go to see if Pulp Fiction was telling the truth about the “Royale with Cheese.”
We walk in the evening and the place is PACKED full of families eating McDonalds for dinner. This is not normal for us being from the U.S. In my city, the people who eat fast food late at night are a mix of homeless-looking people and young teenagers. Or people trying to get a late snack after coming back from the club.
We ordered our food to go and bring back to the hotel. We start eating the food and immediately notice that the burgers actually taste really good. The meat is not as greasy as you would get in the U.S. and the burger is built pretty well. You’ll be lucky in the U.S. if your burger is built with half the patty sticking out of the bun and the toppings falling off. There was also a white creamy sauce they gave us with our meal. I can’t remember what it was exactly but it tasted good with the fries.
I guess fast food is a really good option for Europeans since your meat quality is healthier and tastier compared to what we get.
Canadian here.
I was in Belgium with my family, we had just arrived in Bruges – found our Novotel and decided to wander into the town to see if we could get some food (it was about 9:30 pm, 21:30). We noticed a little restaurant in the town square. When we arrived (party of 6), we asked what time they close, and it was in 30 minutes.
Instead of the usual “Ugh come in (wtf are you coming in at closing time for?!)” reaction I was expecting, we were welcomed with warm smiles, AMAZING SERVICE, INCREDIBLE FOOD, the equivalent of liquid gold (you gotta try local Belgian beer, it has a thicker consistency, and is a bit sweet. Think mead but not as heavy) – and when we finally finished and left, the staff came out and all shook our hands, sent us off with smiles and left us with an amazing memory.
Never have I ever experienced this level of service, this kind of straight-up desire to make someone you’ve never met, happy, right at closing time.
I’ve worked in kitchens before and the tone when orders come in last second is usually like “Dude wtf go home” but this was the exact opposite of that.
The pubs in England. They have got this sh*t down to a science.
First off, there are NO SEATS AT THE BAR. You walk up, order drinks, pay for them, AND WALK THE F*CK AWAY. No loitering at the bar like an a**h*le so nobody else can get to it.
Second, there is always a good cider on tap. Often local. American bars are getting better about this but still nowhere near 100%. Honestly, some people just don’t like beer (not me, but my wife and some friends) and would still like to hang out and drink.
Third, half-size beers. 10 oz. No shame in ordering them. Sometimes you just want a little less.
Last, cask ale. This is more of a taste thing but every pub in London has beer taps with really long wooden handles where the beer is pumped out by hand. This is because they are cellar-temperature, lightly carbonated, wooden cask beers. It’s a totally different take on beer and I love it!
The amount of smoking! I have a close friend in Europe, she’s talked about public transportation and the way the cities are laid out to be beneficial to walking and biking. But nothing prepared me for the amount of smoking I saw when I was in Paris, Helsinki, Tampere, and Turku.
The amount of public transportation and in many places people not driving or not even knowing how to drive.
The main thing that cracked me up was how people view distances. I was in Hartlepool (UK) for work and wanted to go out and have fun. One of the locals said, “Well you could go to Newcastle, but it is a long drive.” It was like 30 friggin minutes away which is nothing to me. I live in Houston and it can take over an hour to drive across the city. God forbid you want to drive across Texas! I went to Tiger Tiger, by the way, that sh*t was intense.
The rivalry between the people who live 20 minutes away was odd to me as well. Like Rotterdam vs. Amsterdam has a big rivalry (don’t wear the wrong team’s jersey in the other city kind of stuff) which is really crazy to an American. That would be like me having some huge rivalry with someone in Sugar Land (a city outside of Houston) We really don’t have crazy rivalries like that, except for people who live in Boston.
Other things: The public transportation was AMAZING! I was surprised by all the people pissing in the streets. The racism is interesting, more out in the open, and people really say what’s on their mind, which I appreciated but also found rude. The age coins for cigarette machines were funny. Lastly, all the young people at the bars were kind of a trip and made me feel really old and weird.
Went to Denmark on a whim with some friends. The biggest surprise was when I realized that I had met a ton of strangers over the course of a week and I had no idea “what they did”. Never once did we talk about work or school.
What always surprises me about travelling in Europe me is how heterogenous Europeans are, and how weak national identities are.
Americans tend to think of Europeans, and even our own European ancestries, in broad national terms. As in, you’re Spanish or French or Italian.
Europeans tend to associate themselves with a cultural identity before a national identity. If you go to Venice, the people there are Venetian, not Italian. You’re not Belgian, you’re Flemish or Wallonian. In Chamonix, France, people are Savoyard(e) and see themselves as having more in common with their neighbors in Switzerland than their countrymen from France. Catalonia is in a full-on revolt from Spain right now.
The last time I was there, we visited the tiny island nation of Malta. I was surprised to learn that a hot political topic was independence for the island of Gozo. Apparently, Gozitans decidedly do not see themselves as Maltese. That was a WTF moment. The entire nation has a population of less than half a million people, even still, there are divisions.
We have our own cultural identities in the US, ask any Texan or New Yorker. Those types of cultural divisions in Europe though seem much stronger and more important, and are forged from thousands of years of history.
My wife and I got married in August this past year. During our planning, we decided we wanted to take our honeymoon to Barcelona and Italy.
We fell in love the moment we arrived in Barcelona and we definitely planned on going back. But, on the last day of our time there, we were on Las Ramblas.
Las Ramblas is the main street in Barcelona. It’s like the heart of the city. Imagine 34th Street in Downtown Manhattan. We were enjoying our final hours in this beautiful city, having come from this tiny hole-in-the-wall bar. Suddenly, there was a lot of commotion. More than what would amount to a very busy street. I remember turning around and it consisting of vendor stands full of flowers, newspapers, souvenirs to chairs and other pieces of furniture.
It also consisted of people running. Lots of people. Loud bangs, later revealed as the gunshots of police and the destruction of what was described above filled the street. And this all transpired within seconds.
Now my wife did not have time to react; it was hard to differentiate it at first amongst the regular commotion of a busy city center. However, after looking behind us, I quickly turned back to her and said one word, “Run”.
I remember her exact reaction. She looked behind her, grabbed my arm and we sprinted. We ran to an alley that led to these sketchy apartments. My heart was racing. All that was going through my mind was that some person was going to round that corner and kill us. We were gonna have to fight. We waited anxiously, just standing in a doorway debating whether we should hide inside this building or be prepared to try and run again.
We waited and waited. The terror and fear in the air seemed to dissipate. That is when a local street musician we had seen from a few nights before came up to us. He asked us if we were ok, and where we were from, and assured us that everything would be alright. We went back to our hotel and kept updating the news. Anyone who watched the news that day knows the tragedies that occurred on that afternoon and later that evening. We booked our flight home.
My wife and I reflected a lot over the next couple of weeks. The whole experience was so surreal. It definitely strengthened and stretched a part of our relationship.
My husband and I went to Italy for our honeymoon. It was a lovely experience and the food was amazing. It felt like regardless of where we ate (Michelin restaurants, street vendors, free hotel breakfast, etc), people took pride in their food. Such a change from the American “cheapest possible ingredients” way of life. I didn’t see a powdered egg even once, very inspiring.
Eating “on the go” is not a thing. I did a summer program in Paris and on my 2-hour lunch break between classes I had to run back to my apartment to get something I had forgotten. My metro ride was close to an hour each way, which left me no time to actually eat lunch, so I bought a sandwich and started eating it as I walked back to my metro station. People looked at me like I had 6 heads!! I wound up shoving it in my bag and not eating it until I got back to school, but that is something I actually appreciate about Europe, that people take the time to enjoy their food, not hurriedly shove something in their mouth because they have no downtime.
The limited use of air conditioning and heating. Visiting Europe during a heat wave I was shocked by how many buildings didn’t have air conditioning at all. Then in the winter, apparently it’s common at least in the UK to turn off the heating at night, and just sleep under a warm comforter. I basically didn’t take off my sweater for months during the UK winter, not even in the house.
The US has the opposite attitude: we use so much heating and air conditioning that most indoor spaces are typically hotter in the winter than in the summer. Frankly, it’s excessive, especially in the southern US during the summer. Not only does it waste energy, but when you’re sweaty and wearing a T-shirt and shorts, the last thing you want is to walk around in a cold air-conditioned mall. It’s refreshing for about 30 seconds and then you’re wet and freezing. Honestly, I wish there were some sort of middle ground between the US and Europe on this one.
I was also surprised by the sheer number of people who smoked cigarettes. I think of Europe as healthier than the US, and I think it’s true generally, but smoking is one massive exception.
Life there makes infinitely more sense. Like everything is so well thought out and painless.
Cars are the exact size you actually need, houses aren’t made of cardboard, seat yourself at restaurants, don’t tip servers, 0 tolerance for rude customers, cities are laid out so efficiently, cops are genuinely looking out for your safety, trains actually arrive on time, traffic circles so almost no traffic, city people ride scooters, roads for only pedestrians. I can go on forever.
Brits don’t refrigerate eggs. In fact, as I understand, only Americans do that. I was in the Waitrose walking in the refrigerated section for an hour. I asked one of the employees, he walked me three aisles over and blew my f*cking mind.
There is hardly any ice to be found in France to put in your drinks. No ice machines in hotels, etc.
And if you ask for ice in your beverage, you’ll get like three small cubes. On a hot day, there are a few things I want more than for my beverage to have a bunch of ice in it.
I arrived at the Charles De Gaulle airport to meet a friend of a friend who was picking me up and I was staying with his family for 3 weeks.
I am a straight man in my 20s and he is a married straight man in his 40s with three kids. We had been corresponding online and on the phone for a few months leading up to my trip. I was grateful for everything he was doing for me and already viewed him as somewhat of a father figure, my “French dad” I called him.
He gave me two big kisses on the cheek. I was a little weirded out by this but knew it was part of their culture and was happy about it. I went to give him a hug to show I was happy to see him. He FLIPPED OUT. He was trying to play it cool, but for two men to hug is totally weird and only sexual couples do it according to him.
It was a great trip though.
Visiting Amsterdam, I was shocked to see SO many people riding bikes. I’ve never seen that many bicycles in my life. A lady in a shop told me, “In Amsterdam, if you yell out, ‘HEY! That’s my bike!’, 6 out of 10 people will drop their bikes and run.” Apparently, bike theft is the biggest crime issue over there.
The pace is much slower, the people were very friendly and extremely interested in our presidential election (this was in late 2007), I didn’t see a single fat person, and I saw a Heineken commercial with completely n*ked men on prime-time television.
LOVED it there.
In Germany, at every restaurant, if you order an alcoholic drink, it comes in a glass that has the volume listed for whatever you ordered, usually 0.3L of wine, or 0.5/1.0L for beer (should I say 0,5 or 1,0) liters right on the side of the glass. This glass is USUALLY branded with the drink you ordered as well. In America, there are no markings on the glassware, so you’re guessing if it’s a legit 1.0L or w/e. And here you can get a bud light poured into a Coors light glass, no f*cks given. In Europe, you are never second-guessing whether you got a fair serving size. To this point, the WATER WAS MORE EXPENSIVE than any beer you could order, and it always came in a recyclable glass bottle that was clearly used before. Sometimes these bottles have deep ridges in them from the recycling process (you can see grooves where the bottle ran along some sort of cleaning belt or something).
As a Mexican-American, lack of spices and strong flavors in most food. Before I started going to Europe on a regular basis I heard Europe (specifically all western/southern countries) got a lead on good cuisine and it’s true in some aspects but everything is toned down a notch. As a Mexican-American, I preferred heavily spiced Mexican, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Southeast Asia food over French cuisine any day (unless I drop serious cash on a Michelin-rated place or some brilliant hole-in-wall).
How relaxed restaurants were. The group I went with went to this amazing place in Santorini that overlooked the water and all of the island and had a great meal then just stayed and talked for a couple hours. The wait staff wasn’t trying to rush us out the door in fact they kept bringing us free deserts and drinks which contributed to us staying longer! Much much different than in the US where once I finish my meal it’s pretty much get out.
When I was in college, I did a study abroad trip that was in a little town in Italy. We (one traveling partner and I) got there on Sunday at about 3 PM local time after traveling for around 24 hours (-> New York -> Milan, then a train to near Trieste). When we arrived, everything was closed. Stores, restaurants, everything.
We were starving, though. The last thing we ate was breakfast on the plane about 6 hours earlier, and we wouldn’t get more food until the first trip breakfast the next morning. So, we want wandering around looking for food.
After a couple of hours, we found a restaurant with its doors open. It was empty inside, but there was one employee there. He didn’t speak English, we didn’t speak Italian, but we managed to communicate “Hey, we’re here to eat.” He motioned for us to sit down. A few minutes later, he brought us each a plate of food. We never ordered or anything, but we were starving, so we just ate. About halfway through eating, an older woman came down and I think asked us how it was… she didn’t speak English either, but we gave her a thumbs up, which apparently translated well enough. We tried to ask for a check, but he just waved us off.
That’s about when we realized, they weren’t open. They lived upstairs, they were cooking themselves dinner, and we wandered in hungry and confused so they fed us. We came back a couple of days later, and it was a much more normal restaurant experience: we were seated, given menus, had a waiter who spoke English, etc.
It was a huge WTF moment but in a good way.
Shops and Shopping. My sister lived off base in England for a little over a year. She was amazed that most people didn’t stock up on groceries for a month at a time. They just went to a shop every few days and only got enough for a few days. She also said there were little shops all over the place instead of large box centers like Sam’s or Costco.
Canadian moved to Sweden here. Workplaces care about their employees. More rights for employees. Higher minimum wage. They get 6 weeks vacation. I still feel like I’m “stealing from the company” if I take a minute to rest or call in sick. When I called in sick, my boss literally texted me and told me that if I needed anything to let her know. It’s wild how much pressure is put on people in North America to give all of yourself to a company that doesn’t pay you what your worth and then treats you like trash. And we’re the ones who blame ourselves if we aren’t perfect or meet the ridiculous standards.
“Student Bars”
Out of curiosity while visiting Paris, I went to one labeled as such thinking it was for college kids. Nope.
It was late high school-aged kids legally drinking beer, wine, and low-grade liquors. The biggest shock to me was how mature everyone was. No one was getting sloppy drunk, wild, or acting as if it was a major social outing. It was like being in a group of responsible 30-somethings who all had work early the next day.
I chatted a few of them up, and they asked me why I was at a student bar as I was clearly too old to be a student. They were nice, well-educated, knew more about American politics than I did French politics, and all spoke about 3 languages.
That small experience showed me that if you educate the youth properly and trust them with growing responsibilities that coincide with maturity, they will mature faster.