i live in a sort of valley surrounded on all sides by mountains, they are just gorgeous, and very good for outdoorsy-funtimes. Driving up or down them is about the most scared I've been of them. (they are not very wide roads and coming across another car after coming around a curve...you have to be a good driver. i'm not looking forward to doing any mountain driving for a while! also when there is nada between you and very steep mountainy slopes but one of those metal railings is not the best. "Will that tree stop us from sliding all the way or is it too old and dry?") Also trying to make your ears pop when they aren't feeling like working with you on the whole popping thing isn't the greatest. One thing I am afraid of is probably caves, and being underwater in a lake or the ocean. Its so BIG and empty but at you know it probably isn't empty and it sets my paranoia off like whoa. And big moving things in the water. Whales, (despite their general chillness and how party they are) but boats especially. I visited my aunt and uncle a while back and we stayed on their relatively little sailboat, and it still took a while for me to grow comfortable climbing up into it. Tho I have to say, staying in a marina in the summertime is a pretty good way to work on your boat-fear.
I feel this on a spiritual level tbh... when I was 15 my mom made me drive miles snd miles across switchbacks up and down a mountain to "build my driving skills". It was a very terrifying experience, but I guess it really did help, because I'm now completely blasé about curvy backroad driving. Spoiler: tiny story (When my great aunt came to visit and I picked her up from her motel to take her to our house, I had no idea why she seemed so nervous until I realized she was in a car going 55 mph on a very narrow road with a 35 ft drop-off on one side and a teenager chatting away while driving). I think I actually drive worse on flat, straight roads, because I get way too relaxed when I don't have to constantly adjust for the slope of the ground and end up going 83 in a 45 zone.
I live in Pennsylvania where you can only buy liquor and wine from state-run stores and beer from private distributors. It's always weird to go to other states and see alcohol in gas stations or grocery stores. I lived in Italy some years ago and couldn't get over how they dressed up to go everywhere - shopping, the gym, to get pizza. Then when I came back, Americans looked like total slobs to me. Double culture shock.
While I was in Montreal (from Manitoba) we went to the grocery store and it had like, the one way bar rotate security things on on of the doors, and then another big normal door for the exit. Apparently they do that instead of the shoplifting sensor things Also there was a giant floor to ceiling bit covered in wine bottles. Apparently alchohol in grocery stores is a thing there. In Manitoba it's has to be an the alcohol only stores. The "LC" or "Liquor Mart" which I think are just different names for the same building.
Since I'm right by the coast, cardinal directions are very much a thing. The direction where there is water is west, and everything else can be assumed from that. Also, east and up are equivalent in local descriptions, because there are hills to the east. The idea that there are places where you can't get beer and wine at the grocery store is also just really weird to me. There's usually an entire aisle devoted to that stuff here.
I can buy beer and wine from the gas station. Puritans are weird, with their special liquor only store laws. That said most of South America has a much freer relationship with alcohol seeing as no one has asked me for id once when buying alcohol, and I have bought alcohol when I was fifteen by straight up strolling into the gas station, grabbing vodka and a mixer, and paying. Voila.
You can buy alcohol anywhere where I live, though you'll get carded, so I couldn't have done what Raire described. There's a sketchy gas station a minute or two down the street from my apartment with a big sign out front advertising their "BEER CAVE."
in ontario we have various wine stores, the LCBO, and literally The Beer Store altho it was a big deal a couple months ago(?) when certain grocery stores got permission to start selling beer, but only at certain checkouts and only until, like, 6pm even when the store is open to 10pm. also i forget if ive told this story here, but my grade 9 french teacher told us how, when she'd been staying with friends in France, she ran into a language thing when she tried to say she'd gotten wine from the corner store. in quebec, thats a dépanneur, but thats not a thing in France, and to be "en pan" also means to have your car break down, iirc. so she basically told her hosts "hey i got some wine from the tow truck driver!" and they were understandably a little weirded out until ahe explained
we have alcohol in grocery stores and gas stations as well as the specialized stores (there's usually like two of those next to each other competing for business when you see them. i rarely see one on it's own.) but we also have drive throughs. they're usually really tacky and i've seen several that had girls paid to stand in bikinis and waive signs all day. they look like you just sorta pull in, hop out of your car and grab something two steps away, pay at a window and pull back out onto the road several beers heavier. i live in texas, for reference.
The thing that always weirds me out a little bit is when Americans talk about drive-in this, and drive-in that. It's like: why can't you get out of the car and walk to the ATM, or walk into the bank? :P Over here McDonalds has a drive through and that is basically it.
On the other hand, in my section of the US, there's drive-up ATMs and such. A drive-in is an archaic outdoor movie theater. I was momentarily confused :P
Yeah well, that is how weird it would be over here ;) That I can't even name the thing properly XD I seriously can't remember the last time I went through a drive through.
Huge car culture + long working hours and commute times + lots of pedestrian- and parking-unfriendly urban areas = drive-up and drive-through services end up being something of a necessity.
Depending on the place, parking lots get shrunk in favor of swift through traffic. It's also an outgrowth of convenience culture, but it definitely helps with anxiety if you can't face to face.
Drive up to the bank because pneumatic tubes need some modern use. and they're cool. also when you're a kid you get magical suckers whenever mom goes to cash a check
I was not disturbed by too much sky or everything is flat. It's surreal, but a magical kind of surreal, not a scary one. I will say I am not fond of southerner's obsessive focus on appearances and polite but still needling criticism. There are areas that I thought looked pretty quaint and normal for where I used to live, only to be informed that was the "bad" part of town. Someone I know thought someone else made them look bad and they cried. For several hours. Conversations are a performance art where every little word and action is interpreted as having some deeper meaning tucked away and it drives me up a wall. In a lot of ways, upstate ny is incredibly redneck. So it wasn't really a rough transition. Except for the stuff mentioned above. I think a big difference is that many white southerners are desperate to not be seen as "white trash" whereas where I'm from nobody really gave a shit.
I spent a semester at an international Christian college in Lithuania. My classmates were mostly Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian. -It's very Asking Culture over there. If you ask someone how they're doing, they'll tell you how they're really doing. "Normal," not "good," is the standard response. If someone wants a favor from you and you don't wanna do it, it's on you to say no. -The women dress up like they're going clubbing, even just to go to class. Eggmode!me felt terribly dumpy compared to my roommates. -Everyone smokes. -Toilet paper goes in the trash, and then you spray air freshener all over. Toilet paper is also sometimes scented. (egh.) -Personal space is assumed to be a bit different. I got cut in line at the grocery store at least once because I left an American amount of space between myself and the person in front of me. -Also, homophobia. So much.
