I'm in the UK and it's totally normal here to have kids sitting on harbour walls catching crabs (crabbing) at any seaside town. I don't give it a second thought but it seems to fascinate foreign tourists.
My area isn't too tourist heavy until you go to the mountains, but I once saw a bunch of tourists crowd around a rattler and one of the dumb fucks got bit. Closest thing I can think of, actually correction I've seen some tourists amazed by a sand storm coming off a dry lakebed on a turnout along the 15.
Whales, northern lights, reindeer
You asked about what we thought fascinating of the UK and what you might be taking for granted so I'll let 'er rip.
I felt the almost omnipresent pressure of an imperialistic black hole that pulled everything to it's centre. I walked the streets of London and saw enormous edifices to grief and religiosity and greed. I saw graffiti from people yearning to express themselves against systems that often held them down. I saw stolen art and belongings of my ancestors hung in galleries to be admired and gawked at. I saw the whims of kings cut entire forests to the ground so that they could "worship" a distant speck of Christianity while hunting their favourite game in their historically exclusive fields. I saw the hollowed out guts of the Industrial Revolution turned into trendy shopping centres and into walkable cities. I saw Palestinian protestors laying on the streets of Oxford as graduates in their gowns stepped around and over them. I saw the land literally wrinkle before my eyes as I went North to Edinburgh. I heard Texans make a fuss at the top of Arthur's Seat. I tried to see the Queen's yacht from a parking garage because I didn't want to pay (rather disappointing). I noticed that almost none of your industrial coolers and fridges actually kept anything cold (but the lights worked and I think I remember hearing the fans whirring, blowing lukewarm air). I saw a doorman enjoy his job and crack some jokes and making people smile. I saw the king's "gateman" with a bullet proof vest and a semi-automatic rifle intimidate tourists to keep them away from his gate. I saw a highschooler throw an orange at a fabulous black actor at the Globe, and another thrown orange from a different high schooler soon after - the play kept going. I saw weapons of war used as posts in the ground. I saw a cyclist get chewed out by a "pensioner" for going too fast and almost hitting her. I saw works of art painted on discarded gum.
I bought a Yorkshire pudding burrito and walked far too long to find a place to sit and eat it - rather tasty.
Fascinating place.
Trees which change color in the fall
Living in the Black Forest is sometimes fun.
First of all people admire the "mountains". While yes, the Black Forest is not quite flat and especially in winter it is often underestimated (we have avalanches and occasionally people die in them) it's not like they are that step and high. At least from my perspective - I grew up in the actual alps. It would be totally different If I grew up in the Netherlands. (And again: The nature is nice and we have wild wolves, Lynx and s few other rare animals here)
The other thing people totally get excited about is "Black forest cake". But.. It has nothing to do with the Forest... it's just a reference to its looks and was invented hundreds of kilometres away. While you can get a decent one here by now, it's still funny.
So...what is the most original thing you can get here? It's the thing the tourists think that they are all produced overseas. The cuckoo clock. Not kidding, while a shitload of them are cheap china trash, you can actually get nice ones for a reasonable price that were still built here. (And some really really nice ones that look modern and stylish as well. I need one of those one day,but they are ridiculously expensive)
Other than that: Old buildings. My last apartment had some walls that were built at a time Australia wasn't discovered by Europeans yet. My kids friend lives in a house that is 800 years old - and always belonged to the same family. The hill the local kids go tobogganing in winter very likely was already used in that capacity 2500 years ago as some archeological sites have shown.
Even my current house is 80 years old and that sometimes sounds absolutely ridiculous to friends overseas.
I did miss lizards in England, they are so nice to have around. And the occasional alligator is cool too, I can only imagine how exciting for a tourist.
I was absolutely stunned to see such OLD things in the UK, we don't have the thousand year old buildings. And basements & the underground metro, places you walk down underground to get to are very uncommon here, would flood. The rain was different too, not a storm, you can just umbrella your way along, that was nice.
In Oxford, it's "normal" to see students walking around in sub-fusc (formal academic dress) at certain times of year. It's not just for matriculation and graduation, you have to do all of your exams in it, too. Tourists seem to love it, though. Some will ask random students for photographs. Some won't bother asking.
I was born and raised in New Hampshire. The leaves turning in autumn is just another part of the season for us like pumpkins, apple cider donuts, and haunted hayrides. People from other parts of the US or even other countries, though, treat it like its a wonder of the world.
When I was in grad school, a French post doc saw one of the pine cones ( some get around the size of your head). She wanted to keep it to prove that “ everything is bigger in America “
I live in the middle of a very sparsely populated forest. Tourists want to see the black bears, wolves, eagles, loons, and deer. You will see the deer, eagles, and loons if you are on a lake. But you probably need to spend serious time in the forest on foot to bump a bear or wolf. If you want to see those, we have a bear and then a wolf center where biologists study their behavior and keep a small number in captivity. And evidently, both centers are pretty famous for the work they do with other wildlife biologists around the world.
And oddly enough come fall, they drive around to see the leaves on the trees turn pretty colors. It's popular enough that news stations in the one large metropolitan area we have in this state, actually tracks and includes the rate and areas where the leaves are turning color so tourists can drive and see them.
When winter arrives, we get a fair number that drive here to go ice fishing when the ice gets safe enough to drive on.
In Sydney most trains...
(a) Are double decker
(b) Have seats which flip to face the opposite direction.
Australian pedestrian crossing lights cater for the blind and the deaf-and-blind. Billie Eilish's brother/producer sampled the sound, when he visited, for her smash hit.
Fireflys.
Squirrels, I guess. Oh and so many prisons.
When my son was in college, he became good friends with a girl from Australia, and when she saw her first squirrel, she thought it was so cute, she cried. My son just said "These are just scrawny NYC squirrels. You should the fat guys we have where I grew up."
You go to some tiny, dying town and it has 700 years of history, often 1000+ years of proof of habitation before that and a majestic church that is a work of art on its own.
I live near the Rocky Mountain line so I've seen it many times. People I've met in other cities I've lived in always say they're jealous that I'm close to such a place but live there long enough and they just become another mountain
Penguins, the biggest desert on the planet, snow blindness
Depositing bottles.
Put them into a machine, and it gives you money back 🤯
Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu