30 Peculiar Things That Seem Normal In Some Countries But Not In The Rest Of The World

My city is EXTREMELY bilingual, everyone speaks both English and French. You’ll hear people speak both languages in conversations quite often, sometimes in the same sentence. In stores, most of the time, people greet you with both languages and you reply in one of them, which tells them which language you prefer to talk in. They go "Bonjour, Hi!" And you say Bonjour back if you want to continue in French or Hi if you rather speak English. It’s kinda crazy.

I’m from Montréal, Canada.

I live in Dublin and when we tell people who live in America that we put crisps in sandwiches they laugh at us. Just try it mate. It’s so good

Free Sundays (germany)
Everything, literally everything is closed on Sundays which is amazing cuz everyone (except from the most essential like doctors, firefighters and the police) have a free day which is awesome!!

In Austria around Christmas/St Nicholas time we have events called "Krampusläufe" where people, mostly young (drunk) men dress up as demonic devil-like creatures called Krampus with fur suits, creepy masks and cow bells and pull of shows that include lots of fire, smoke, witch burns etc while mainly Ramstein plays in the back. They also like to whip people in the audience with cow tails. And hell yea we enjoy the show while getting drunk on hot punch. We even bring our kids along.

In Australian rural towns we all had our back doors unlocked; and friends are allowed to go through the back door and make themselves a cup of tea/coffee while they wait for you to get back from whatever you were doing.

Experiencing 4 seasons every day. Jacket on, jacket off, it's sunny but it's raining, freezing and windy, then it's hot again... I like to wear shorts and puffer jacket combos for both extremes. Tasmania.

In the Eifel, germany, on the night to 1st of may, people paint a long line from one house to another. The line means that someone in these households is having an affair. Every year several relationships break up because of this. I love it.

Alligators. Just...everywhere. I live in a swampy area of Florida, and it's pretty normal to come across alligators in small ponds, ditches, around pools, or just chilling in a parking lot. I've nearly tripped on alligators more times than i'd like to admit. Thankfully they're pretty chill and won't really bother you unless you mess with them or go near a nest. The police are even trained to deal with rogue alligator calls.

I live next to a game reserve in South Africa. It's not that surprising to hear baboons in your back yard, or spot a rhino 10 meters from your fence.

One time a whole troop of baboons ran over our roof. It's only corrugated iron and we all shat our pants.

Madagascar. Every now and then we dig up corpses of our loved ones, bring 'em through the village where they lived for a visit, change the tissues they where covered in (several layers) with new ones and put them back in the grave and all that while partying.

I live in NJ and it’s illegal here for you to pump your own gas/fuel. All stations are full service by law. I believe Oregon is the only other state in the USA that has this law.

In Norway it's normal to release two million sheep (read: ***two*** ***million*** ***sheep***) into the *wild*, mostly unsupervised, where an estimated *100.000* of them die to either injuries, illness or predators, with the farmers crying and complaining (usually only to that last one), and then repeat the same process again the next year, and every year after that.

Does Norway kind of have a f****d up and moronic sheep farming practice? Yes, yes we do.

Where I used to live in Manitoba, nobody had fences, mainly because when the properties were divided up, the town planners left space that belonged to the town behind all of them, that was just a strip of forest and Canadian shield. So almost nobody put up fences because it cut off their view & access to what was essentially a super cool nature trail network throughout the town. Everyone knew once you hit mowed grass, that belonged to someone. Us kids barely ever went anywhere on foot via roads or sidewalks, we always took the trails (we rode bikes on the roads though, there were too many rocks on the trails for a regular kid's bike)

Of course, living in a forest had some unintended consequences. We frequently had bears, so I remember when I wasn't even 5 yet being taught what to do if I saw a bear. And two separate years we had a mountain lion, which was a lot worse. The town would hire someone to trap and relocate these animals but it always took a while. I remember watching a bear lying down under the crabapple tree in our front yard just eating all the windfall apples for ages, not a care in the world.

Driving 3 hours at 100km/h and still being in the middle of nowhere (Australia). In parts of Europe you’d have crossed 3 borders in that time

Starting college, meeting your class on week 1 and then having introductory sauna the next week, boys and girls all drunk & nekkid. Finland :3

People who are 12-14 driving tractors on the roads in rural Ireland. The legal minimum age is 16, but most farmers don't really care.

EDIT: I didn't realise that this is a rural thing. Still comes as a shock to urban people though.

Driving over the mountains and shouting "mint sauce" out the window to the sheep....

Wales

( And fellow welshys... Don't lie..you know you've done it)

Free public transport in the whole country: buses, trains, trams.

Having your birthday party look like this:

Your livingroom is transformed so that there's a great circle of chairs with a coffeetable in the center.

If it's an afternoon party, guests will visit between 14:00 and 17:00 or 18:00 - 21:00, but not both! there's 1 timeslot for friends and 1 for family).

As a guest, you arrive, you congratulate the birthday boy or girl, hand over your present. Then you introduce yourself to the group if you don't know them yet. Then, you go over the circle and shake everyone's hand and ALSO congratulate them with so-and-so's birthday.

After making your way through the circle, you take your empty chair and that is now your seat for the rest of the party.

After everyone arrived, the birthday person will bring you a piece of cake and a beverage (usually coffee or tea). Everyone eats their cake and talks to the person sitting next to him/her.

After everyone is done, there'll be a tour of the house and any new things will be pointed out to you. Now is your moment to ask some questions like "oh, was it expensive?" and also compliment the host on how great it is.

After the tour there'll be another round of food and drinks, snacks will be laid out on the coffeetable, but you shouldn't eat much of it. This is the only food that will be brought out and everyone has to share it.

After guests were there for about 3 hours they'll leave again. Everyone knows they're expected to leave but you need to come off as really wanting to stick around longer but you just couldn't because the dog needs to go for a walk or something, make up any excuse that sounds probable.

Then, repeat the cycle again in the evening with the other group. The weekend after that, invite your close friends to come over and have the real party.

Brazil: Apparently being in a restaurant for hours and hours and only eating in 1% of the time. We talk for hours before and after eating here, so we don't leave right after eating. Everyone I knew from other country found it strange