How to visit our countries.

Looks like Family Guy has fans in Germany.

Why would they want to vacation in the 30s and 40s? That's either unpleasantly cold or unpleasantly hot, depending on the scale!

@Nyarly: you're from anywhere around Lusatia?

What happens in the Reeperbahn, stays in the Reeperbahn.

Just sayin', like.

Ah, talking about "everyone was on vacation" — you know, in that time period, they did send like millions of tourists to all of Europe...

I'm from Silicon Valley, meaning that part of northern California around San Jose. Y'know, Google, Apple, all that.

I haven't read the whole thread, so I'm not sure if anyone else from the area has posted. Anyway!

• Don't be surprised if you see shop signs that aren't written in English. It's really ethnically diverse here. It's still America, so you do need to know English.
  • Going off that, we've got a lot of different kinds of restaurants. If you're adventurous in terms of food, you'll have a lot of fun here.
• Speaking of food, we have In-N-Out Burgers. Definitely worth trying - it's a lot better than your average fast food chain.
• If you go to San Jose, check out the Tech Museum. It's pretty awesome.
• Starbucks is everywhere. So is Subway.
• There are a ton of frozen yogurt places. Like, the kind where you pay by the ounce and pick your toppings and all that. They seem to be popular right now.
• Being kind of nerdy is generally not an issue, from what I've seen. Although I guess it depends on where you are and who you're with.
• If you go grocery shopping in Sunnyvale, Cupertino, or San Jose, bring your own bags. You can't get plastic anymore and paper is 10 cents apiece.
• You will see tons of Priuses. This is normal.
• This is NorCal, so although our weather is generally nice, don't expect it to be summer all year round. We have a cold, rainy season (November to March, usually) and a hot, dry season (the rest of the year.) If you're here anytime besides the rainy season, you can count on it to be sunny most of the time. That said, "sunny" does not always mean "warm," so sometimes in the spring and fall you'll get days where the sun's out but it's still chilly.
• The Pacific Ocean is freezing cold, and if you want to spend any length of time in it, you'll want a wetsuit.
• We've got a pretty nice public transit system. The buses are $2 a trip. Day passes are $6, so if you're going on more than three trips in one day, it's cheaper to get one of those. Some areas have lightrails, but there aren't any around where I live.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

edited 25th Sep '12 2:56:23 PM by SapphireBlue

Scotland: You are obligated (by me) to try haggis at least once. Just have it in a decent restaurant or buy it to home cook; don't get it out of one of the many fish and chip shops. Deep fried haggis tastes pretty grim.

edited 26th Sep '12 5:00:09 AM by GameChainsaw

Haggis was the only native food I could handle while in the UK. (It's so good!)

But jesus if not for all the Arabic, Southeast Asian, and Chinese stalls around I would have starved. British food is harsh.

They'll put absolutely anything in a pie.

At least you didn't go to Ireland, home of potatoes.

But yes, we will pie anything.

Oh!

Oh!

Another note:

When conversing with a person of an ethnic minority status, you are not allowed to make stereotypical jokes about them. Britons can. But you can't. For example, taxi drivers are South Asian. Although this is true, you can't say it.

Or, all corner shops are owned by South Asians. This is also true, but you can't say it.

I can say it, because I am a Briton.

Rules for visiting the Netherlands.

• Don't go and travel the country by bike. You probably don't know the written rules, and you defenitly don't know the unwritten ones.
• If you made the mistake to travel by bike, lock it. With, in the countryside, at least one lock, in small cities with at least two locks, in big cities with three locks, and in amsterdam, with at least four locks.
• Don't ask random Dutch people where the red light district is, and don't ask them if they sell weed.
• Visit the big cities, Amsterdam if you like old architecture or bars, Rotterdam if you like modern architecture or harbours, Groningen if you want to visit a city that no-one else visits. (It is worth a visit, don't misunderstand me.)
• Keep in mind that a cup of coffee in the Netherlands is seldom more than two sips.
• If you go into a cheese shop, be prepared to choose from a lot of slightly-different Dutch cheeses.
• Don't be to polite. We don't expect you to be, and we aren't.
• Americans: don't hug anyone you are not in love with!
• Try some french fries with Dutch mayonaise. Our mayonaise is different from yours.
• Don't try to find a place with wild nature. we don't have any.
• Don't go and search for mountains. Or steep hills.
• Go 'wadlopen' WITH A GUIDE. (walking on the bottom of the sea.) there is a lot of unknown nature there.
• Go to other places than the big cities in the west of the Netherlands. In the many villages in the countryside, life is a little slower, and the people are different. A lot of vilages have a small museum about the history of the vilage too.
• If you are trying to learn Dutch, you'll have to ask them to talk Dutch, because many Dutch people think that they are good at English (how well they actually speak it, varies.), and will switch to English if they hear that you aren't Dutch.

edited 26th Sep '12 8:12:21 AM by skarl

This stereotype does continue to puzzle me, if only because I don't really see a lack of variety in what we eat. I mean, it's not like restaurants and supermarkets are devoted exclusively to Yorkshire pudding.

Bah! You white people! You come in here, and order the blandest, most plain and watery thing in the restaurant!

Tourists only come to Manhattan, and then talk about how that's all NYC has to offer. And then make the mistake of buying from the tourist traps.

I was born in Ireland, received my American citizenship at age 17 and have spent time in both areas. So I freaking love my potatoes!

When I went to the UK, I spent time in London, Manchester, Liverpool, and various places in Scotland and Wales.

I tried fish and chips, various roasts, even got to eat at a friend's house. It was rough. Everything was so greasy, or overcooked to little taste. Breakfast at the various hotels were always a challenge. No matter where I went they tried to put baked beans on everything. Which in itself isn't bad in itself, but you do get bored of it.

Even at Stonehenge they were selling cups of beans! *laughs*

The only grocery store I could find was a Tesco or the little corner shops owned by foriegners. The little shops were far better in finding food than the big stores. It didn't help British people call everything something different. It got to where I would go to the corner stores just so I could speak Hindi and feel understood since my English didn't match theirs.

I have once been to Britain, and it was nice, actually.

The land is beautiful. The people are nice. The museums and art is breathtaking, libraries are great. I love rain so the weather was great to me. The food was the only thing I didn't like.

Don't look at me! It was my dad's idea to get a hotel in Newark and then explore Manhattan exclusively; I begged him to let me go to Brooklyn. There are no good used bookstores in Manhattan that haven't been taken over by dicks, to hear the internet tell it, they're all across the bridge.

Last time I was in England I got a bag of chips.

My god, I thought it would never end.

Mmmmm, chips... hey, do they have chip trucks in the States or is it just a Canada thing? It doesn't strike me as something Brits would have out in the countryside - those ones you have on street corners that can actually drive away don't count.

It depends where you are in America. There are some areas like Florida that are more vending machine heavy. Here in Arkansas all you get are the ice cream trucks and only in season. We do have a lot of taco stands year around though. (God bless our growing Hispanic population!)

I have noticed in places like Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and the pan handle of Texas there are more stand like trucks that have a route, park in a place, then make a route again of various types ranging from snacks to full on noodle trolleys.

Otherwise, we are a land of quick stores where you can walk most anywhere and get chips or munchies.

We have yogurt trucks, but I don't think I've ever seen a chip truck that was vending as opposed to supplying a supermarket.

Ah. Well, if you're on the outskirts of any Canadian town from May to September, especially small ones in Ontario, you'll probably see what looks like a 1950s milk truck on blocks - or even, gods help them, slowly disintegrating tires - on the edge of a parking lot. Maybe at a gas station or a public school. And that truck will be selling fresh-cut fries, along with any combination of the following: burgers, milkshakes, soft drinks, hot dogs, sloppy joes, ice cream, chicken fingers, chicken wings*, fried fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, onion rings, floats, chicken caesar salad and/or wraps.

• Note to Canadians - apparently chicken wings and buffalo wings are not the same thing in the States. Buffalo wings are the saucy ones, and they never call them chicken wings. But yeah, Yanks, all wings are wings to me. We say buffalo wings to distinguish them from deep-fried wings or other plain-ish ones, but chicken wings is still the general term for all of them.

edited 26th Sep '12 11:06:29 AM by FurikoMaru

That sounds delicious!

Note that I did not guarantee they'd be good fries.