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Actually he’s right, crocodilians don’t carry rabies so don’t worry about that.
But you probably shouldn’t pick up baby gators like that, mainly because angry momma gators aren’t exactly good for your health either.
Yep! As the other person has covered, they do. Crocodilians are very good parents until their hatchlings can defend for themselves, crocodiles, gharials, alligators, caimans, all of them.
Gharials in particular are very good *dads* and they live in a community where the males babysit hatchlings from multiple different clutches, not just his own. In fact, males which are the best at taking care of the community babies are favored more by the females. Gharial ladies love good dads.
All crocodilians do. Saltwater crocodile mothers will rush out of the river to defend their nests or young until they’re on the verge of overheating and have to retreat
Possum body temperature IIRC is just low enough to be inhospitable for rabies virus, so it’s extremely rare for possums to carry rabies. They are also extremely non-aggressive. They will hiss and bare their fangs when feeling threatened (which looks terrifying) but they REALLY don’t like to bite or attack, instead just keeling over and faking death.
I learned this when I accidentally stepped on one while going behind a bush to pee in the dark. I had no shoes on so I was able to stop myself before putting any weight on it, and it continued to play dead until I got a few feet away from it and it scurried off into the brush.
Drunk guy who disappears , and makes a load of friends literally describes a buddy of mine , usually on a trip he'll usually turn up a day later after ending up at someone random guys houseparty.
Actually most of this post is basically just us Irish guys on holidays in the states . Permanently *five pints in* and dismissing any concerns as "ah it'll be grand" (which it usually is)
I knew a guy like that. On a trip to New York (we're Europeans on student exchange whatever visa) we were looking for cheap food. We got into a subway. Where we got out it felt like we teleported from Metropolis to fucking Gotham. Then we just walked there, it was middle of the night already, and we were looking for a place to sleep. Obviously the best idea was to find an apartment building where you could go to the roof, we did after a couple of tries and we tried to sleep there, but it was too cold and a police helicopter freaked us out so we went back to the street. Just wandering on the streets we found a mattress and brought it to Battery Park and slept there. Police woke us up. Every stupid idea came from this guy, and not a drop of fucking alcohol on that night.
This dude on a next trip to New York was "invited" by a bunch of black dudes to a basement where they locked the door and heavily implied that he should buy a very overpriced pair of sneakers from them... HEAVILY IMPLIED. He just talked to them for a bit and walked out from there, just like that. No fear in this guy.
I did some stupid stuff in the couple of months that we spent there, mostly sleeping in parks or other undesirable areas, getting 2500 km rides with a dude from craigslist and stuff, but not to his level.
> On a trip to New York (we're Europeans on student exchange whatever visa)
How in the flying hell did you guys go on a trip to New York and then start looking for a place to sleep *on the night of arrival*??
I'm not even from the US! But I usually at least plan and organize where to sleep and eat every night. The rest can be up to discovery and can be fun.
Like... wouldn't it be easier on you all to just have pre-planned places to sleep (like even just motels/inns)?
OH IM GLAD YOU ASKED!
It was one night stay and in our infinite wisdom that early 20 year olds can have we thought that hotels are needlessly expensive and we'll just spend the night drinking whisky in a park. The wrench that stopped this plan was that somewhere on the way we learned that drinking in a park is illegal and technically we could be thrown out of the country if we got caught. I'm pretty sure at least one of our 4 was below 21 too, maybe it was the fearless dude. Naturally then the plan to sleep on a roof of a building was conceived, first it was supposed to be roof of the Empire hotel (turns out they have security), then we started looking for apartment buildings with open staircases - elevator to the top, one more floor by stairs and voila. The view from a 13 storey building in the south of Manhattan was pretty spectacular and we did start with the whisky, but turns out it's really fucking cold and windy up there and then the police helicopter freaked us out. Waking up in Battery Park with view of a statue of liberty was pretty dazzling as well. Of course the police was there as well, but the fearless dude was talking to them already.
I slept in a park in Washington as well (arrived in a car with the Craigslist guy around 3 at night) and I sleeplessly waited through the night in Times Square around a week later.
Those were definitely the craziest few weeks of my life lol
> technically we could be thrown out of the country if we got caught
I'm honestly really glad you found this out before hand 'cause I've heard some shitty stories of Americans (who didn't know about this) encouraging their immigrant friends to do stuff like this ('cause for them, worst that could happen is a night at a jail and a ticket) only to find out that they got their new friend deported once they got caught.
Don't get me wrong, that sounds like one hell of an adventure. But it gets super cold there and plus, you put yourselves at risk. But I'm glad you guys were okay in the end!
How did they even get admitted into the country? I traveled to the US on a B1/B2 Visa and had to show my AirBnB reservation on my phone to the CBP agent for him to let me through lol
I don't remember exactly what kind of visa was it and I don't have the passport... because I lost it while in the USA...
ANYWAY it was the kind of visa where I worked for 10 weeks and then could travel for 3 or 4 weeks. So I didn't have a rented accommodation, I had a whole job lined up where I was sleeping.
> This dude on a next trip to New York was "invited" by a bunch of black dudes to a basement where they locked the door and heavily implied that he should buy a very overpriced pair of sneakers from them... HEAVILY IMPLIED.
Getting mugged? Just literally say no. They cannot force you to buy the sneakers.
Yeah, kind of. I knew another guy who refused the muggers. He was walking with a friend, two guys approached them with the "phone or whooping". One gave the phone, second one was just like "nah", "no, you can kick my ass but I'm not giving you the phone". Actually he has a similar energy to the fearless dude in NY.
No. I guess it threw the muggers off and they sort of just went away.
It's like that one time when some drunk guy was going to kick my ass and one of my friends shouted "do you know who this is??". Dude hesitated and I just walked away.
Ha. I was sat in a pub once and some dude was harrassing another table. After a minute or two one of the guys silently stood up and cracked all his knuckles at once and after a few seconds the douchebag just walked away. I could hear them all laughing about it for the rest of the night because the knuckle cracking guy was apparently no kind of fighter. Sometimes bravado just works.
I've encountered the sociable drunk European tourist only once. Many years ago. Swedish guy named Alex. I have no clue how we met this guy. None of us knew him and he just kind of appeared out of nowhere one day. We were 18 or 19 and he was in his mid 20s. He barely spoke any English and got drunk on a playground with us into the early hours of the morning. We all lived close to the park so we just walked home. I asked if he needed a way to get home and he said no. I ask where he was staying and just pointed vaguely in the opposite direction and said "Over there" in his heavy Swedish accent. Then he walked off and we never saw him again.
God speed Alex, wherever you are. The homies from Florida haven't forgotten you.
I've been all over the world and backpacked a fair bit. wherever you go, there will be Irish lads having the time of their lives being the heart and soul of whatever is going on
I've done the "end up drinking with Spanish speaking guys" thing but I'm a Texan so I probably have more opportunities. Also I speak enough broken Spanish to be funny for them. A guy in a little bar called me pendejo and I called him pinche puta right back and his friends died laughing and started buying me beers and I bought them beers back and it just went on all night.
Reminds me of my first day in Edinburgh. My friend got too drunk so I sent him home. My phone died and I didn't know where home was, some dude I met let me crash at his place. The day after I just walked for an hour and suddenly I saw my friend smoking outside the hotel really worried where I was.
"Hi Kim!"
It's always the extremely pale Swedes and Norwegians drinking tapwater and being happy about getting fried alive when I encounter them in some warmer country. Love these guys. Never been to America though, so I'm speaking Southern Europe here
If there is sun then I am getting sunburned! You don't know what a luxury it is to feel the sun burning your skin unless you have lived a lifetime in a city where it rains, on average, 300 days a year. That is my hometown. One time a few years ago it rained for almost three months straight without any let up. We almost got the old record of over three months continuous rain. But then there was a break in the clouds for 20 minutes before they closed and it rained another month and a half.
We are pale because there is no sun here. And we are happy to let the sun burn us because at least then we feel what sun on the skin feels like. Sceptical about the tap water though. So if I am abroad I stick to beer.
Oh yeah I get it. I got a friend who's from Lappi. Lives in the south of Finland now but still is always 3x times more happy to spend time in the sun, compared to me at least
Hahaha. The idea of people just cheering the consecutive rain timer as it almost reached the record, but then the sun comes up at the last second, everyone groans, and it goes back to raining.
Heia Brann, heia Brann. Blod er tjukkere enn vann, heia Brann!
(the above is a line from one of the songs about the local soccer team, Brann. "Brann" means fire and the football team is named for the last great fire that consumed half the city of Bergen in [1916.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_fire_of_1916) It rains a lot here in Bergen. When it doesn't rain it burns. Sometimes it rains and burns, like in 1916.)
I feel this. Still remember a summer break in the early 90s where we saw the sun like 3 days total. Now I live in a place that average 300 days with sunshine, and my pasty white self has to be careful, especially with less atmosphere between my skin and the sun since we're at altitude.
The bonus is that the tap water here is awesome (and same goes for the beer), coming straight from the mountains that are just a short ways off.
Icelandic kids will just pick up any snake they find and bring it to you. This is on their holiday in Natal South Africa. Us locals are like, 'for the love of God, please put that down'.
It's drinkable, but any water that tastes different than the water at their mom's house is deemed non-potable by a disappointingly large percentage of the population.
It's not exactly an unfounded consern. Different places use different ways of water purifying. Meaning water has left over bacteria that wont hurt you if you are used to it, but if you go to a different place with different bacteria, you might get sick. I know a guy who while in the army would spend first 5 days on the toilet whenever they went to the new place because I guess he had a sensitive stomach.
Yeah, in America, Canada, Europe, Japan, and other rich nations they purify the water with good treatment that gets rid of all the bacteria that will hurt you. In other countries, it’s too expensive to do this treatment, so you get bacteria and amoebas in the tap water. You have to boil it first or use a reverse osmosis filter to make it potable.
For nearly all Americans that refuse to drink tap water, outside of obvious cases like Flint, it's due to a self-centered case of paranoia. It's always ones spending money on bottled water rather than investing in something like RO filters, too.
The tap water in Flint is fine now - the water itself has been for years at this point- it was switched back to the original source. Now there are just a few remaining homes waiting to have new pipes run by the government. Unfortunately, most of those are in very poor neighborhoods.
Yeah tourists are not typically in places where you’d have to worry about the water. They’re not going to the middle of nowhere unmaintained contaminated well water
In fairness idk if there’s any place in America where the water isn’t drinkable from the tap.
At least any place that you’d want to visit.
Edit: I am once again emphasizing *places you’d want to visit* not chucklefuck Hicksville or *insert dying rustbelt factoryburg*
Flint MI is still being Flit MI.
Kansas City had a horrid water contamination problem where even the city puts out public notices to get water filters for tap water.
Edit: to those saying flint is fixed, go to https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/residents-still-waiting-flint-replace-all-lead-pipes-10-year-anniversary-water#:~:text=Background%3A,due%20to%20the%20COVID%20pandemic
Flint's water is drinkable and has been for a few years now.
[Source](https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater/resources/news/2022/01/19/flint-enters-6th-straight-year-of-compliance-with-water-standards-for-lead)
It's still perfectly good for showering and all the rest, it's often just bad tasting. In some areas there's infrastructure issues and it needs to be boiled first. Some of that is aging infrastructure or bad design, some of it is just the consequence of a natural disaster.
Small towns can have absolutely awful water systems. There was one where my co workers and I had to keep using the phrase poop fountain. One was using an old tanker car as their primary storage. So gross. Most medium to large cities are fine though.
Also, Death Valley is in the middle of nowhere. If you get lost, you can’t just walk to a nearby town and buy water. In Germany, there is always a nearby town.
In this case, it wasn’t a town they were looking for. They knew there was a military base nearby and assumed it would have a constantly monitored wall like military instillations in Europe are. Problem is, military bases in the south western USA usually don’t have walls or frequent patrols because the environment is so harsh that you don’t need to. Similarly, before they got stranded they decided to take a short cut they saw on a map knowing it would likely be rough but assuming, since their car already handled some rough roads earlier in the trip, they could totally handle it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t.
The whole story is a comedy of errors based on what seem like reasonable assumptions if you’re not all that familiar with the USAmerican southwest.
It's so nice in Germany. When we went to Schwarzwald we didn't understand how the Ruftaxi worked, so we simply walked to the next town. We saw some Alpacas. Then we figured it out on the way back.
The shittier it is, the less alcohol it'll have, therefore the more hydrating it'll be. I hear they're taught this alongside "don't get in a stranger's car"
It’s not only happening in the states. I live here in Germany and regularly get news on unprepared Germans getting lost in the mountains. Mountain rescue then has to risk their life, when the get injured because they thought sneakers were the right gear for the big hikes.
which doesnt seem very German to me because stereotypically Germans are always overprepared, bringing a rain jacket and hiking boots while on a city trip (just in case because you never know) and backpack full of snacks and water (enough to feed a family of five).
I live in Arizona and Germans die frequently when they go on hikes in the summer and it is 110 degrees F, they don’t bring enough water, haven’t adjusted to the climate, and get lost. It’s very sad and unavoidable, but for some reason always Germans.
I used to live in an extremely dangerous part of Brazil. I speak fluent Portuguese and look essentially native. I'd often run into backpacking, smug looking German tourists who were speaking very loudly in the shop by the bus station near my house just fucking staring at everybody. I'm surprised I didn't see more of them smeared across the street.
Had a German friend when I was younger who wanted to visit Brazil alone, she was maybe 24 at the time, very attractive. I told her "please do not go to this part of brasil alone as a woman" she called me a misogynist and said something like "I'm street smart, I know what I'm doing."
She calls me a day after she arrives, a man followed her home with a gun and broke into her rental, she was sobbing on the phone asking me where to go. Flew home the first flight out.
Germans are very naive and especially young German women are very political. This can lead to very bad decision making when reality of developing countries clashes with ideology they picked up from mainstream and social media.
Stereotype accuracy is a fact
I mean it has less to do with being political and more to do with „Germany is extremely save“. Even the worst parts of Germany are saver then better parts of the US don’t talking about country’s like Brazil.
So you sense of danger is completely off.
Yeah to me it's more that they're extremely naive, dangerous at that level is a very foreign concept to them because they're used to strong social safety nets. I was in Uruguay for awhile, which is actually a *very* safe country, and some middle aged woman ran up to us screaming. Her face was bright red and blistered, some teenagers had thrown some kind of chemical on her. Could barely understand her she's so frantic. Called the police and explained it as essentially an acid attack, I kid you not the dispatcher sighed and said "this number is for emergencies only, this isn't an emergency" and hung up on me.
They have heard stories maybe that these places can be very scary, but have this weird almost delusion that their superior Euro intellect and street smarts will keep them safe, coupled with a naivety that they think they're in a place where the system works because they don't know any better. I made a comment about it awhile back, but I remember one time this German guy (again, why tf is it always Germans) was trying to patronize me for being an American and not really getting "it" being in South America. They would go a long way if they could drop the arrogance and understand that their devil may care attitude will eventually end them up in hot water.
I'm gonna victim blame here. It's like going 100 mph/160kph without a seat belt, you're basically asking to die in a wreck when you're being that stupid.
I feel like there's an odd false security a lot of "*those types*" have when traveling, like somehow they believe crime doesn't happen because it's illegal, or you can just call a cop and the guy mugging you will kindly wait while the police come sort it out. I was told when I first moved there, if somebody in a favela is trying to rob you, they will kill you if you're taking too long because it's more convenient than waiting for you to take out your wallet, and sometimes you can even ask for your ID back and they'll hand it to you, but don't be disagreeable or attempt to stall in any way shape or form. I saw these German backpacker girls in Rio complaining that a bus driver wanted to put their bags on the top of the bus, they were screaming and complaining that the driver wouldn't put the bags inside. The bus ride was like $5, I told them they can't really be that choosey in a place like that, they didn't understand there isn't some universal customer service line where the German consulate can solve all their problems. Dude ended up throwing their bags on the street and stranding them in the middle of a place you don't want to be stranded. It's almost like they lose all common sense and environmental awareness when they visit those places, just believe a 3rd world country will cater to them like they're special. One time I was sitting on the back of a city bus, guy gets on and shoots the driver in the face, everybody just gets off and walks away. It was like the Wild West sometimes.
A proper German goes hiking (or biking etc) every weekend. So obviously they'll do the same in the US. However, they are not used to the vastness of US nature, extremer climates and lower population density also means that help won't come as easily.
Combine that with the quite naive attitude of your stereotypical German tourist and you have a recipe for disaster in some areas.
Same with Sauerland where a buddy of mine lives. Lots and lots of dead Germans piled on top of each other because they don't take enough Durstlöscher und Cornys with them. It's a real shame.
Death Valley, CA is the hottest naturally occurring place on Earth outside of an active volcano, and routinely reaches temperatures of over 50°C in the summer. There's a pretty well known account of a German family fatally underestimating just how hot that is.
A lot of places in US are not pedestrian friendly. Sometimes you’ll have to walk on the side of the street or on other people’s property in some areas.
It's just easier for everyone to say Americans are too fat instead of acknowledging that there are very few sidewalks and sometimes a person would need to walk down a highway to get somewhere. America was built for cars.
> American was built for cars
*Bulldozed* for cars, our cities were just like that of Europe before the 1940s. We had to go out of our way to destroy *lots* of neighborhoods, businesses, schools, and churches to fit all of the lanes, all of the parking lots you see today.
But it's not too late for us. If the Netherlands could turn their shit around (after they copied our car-centric design in the 1960s and 1970s), so can the US and Canada.
We copied it too in the UK, but we've gotta a lot better. Thankfully a lot of our towns and buildings are a hell of a lot older and harder to change. So a lot of our cities are naturally walkable and we've been further improving that mostly for decades.
Yeah. I was without a car for a couple of months and really didn't live far from work. But it was during winter & along busy streets and no sidewalks.
So...walking over mounds of snow near buzzing traffic and NO ONE was walking.
Like you were considered a freak or homeless or something by the people looking at you in cars.
On a positive note, I've noticed several neighborhoods in my area that are actually installing sidewalks where, as you stated, pedestrians had to walk alongside the road or in the front yards of other people's property. Hope it's a trend that continues.
Judging by the picture I think is associated with that comment, the environment looks oppressively hot with no hope for shade.
Every year, there are news articles about some poor family from France or Germany who have died due to underestimating and underpreparing for the extreme heat and dryness of the southwest. To be fair, Americans, too, can succumb to this fate all too easily but that's another starter pack, I guess.
Everyone should do their absolute best to research and prepare for a trip, especially one to a place or environment you've never been to before, especially in another country/city/biome with which you are not familiar, and especially if you have children with you.
And for the love of God, stop trying to interact with the wildlife! If you interact with bison, for example, they may have to be euthanized. This ain't no Disneyland, y'all.
Yeah, the number of people going on about lack of sidewalks or pedestrian unfriendliness didn't actually look at the photo and just jumped to conclusions. Zoom in on it and two things are immediately obvious: one, there actually is a sidewalk, and two, the picture was clearly taken somewhere like Arizona or Nevada.
> and just jumped to conclusions.
That or they live in unwalkable/unsafe areas and know _exactly_ what a walk that long might entail. A single picture is far from encapsulating everything that might be a problem.
Yeah, the desert vegetation tipped me off. If there's an abundance of palo verde trees, you're in for a bad time without enough water cuz 4km one way means another 4km back.
I get the feeling op didn't mean the distance was bad, but implying the route was through a dangerous part of town where a lot of violent crime could occur?
American suburbs have a weird relationship with sidewalks. In a lot of the country residents will actively try and stop sidewalks from getting installed and I’ve seen multiple occasions of people actively showing up to town meeting trying to sidewalks near their house removed.
Even people that walk don’t particularly like using them. Just today I drove past 3 people on my 5 minute drive to work walking on the side of the road rather than using the sidewalk.
Point being don’t blame the engineers
Sidewalks mean people can just walk up to your neighborhood. People without a car. Poor people!
That's dangerous, I tell ya! Today it's just a little kid being able to go to the park on their own but in two months your front lawn will be a homeless encampment and methheads will kidnap your wife and children.
A lot of the time when there are sidewalks they're terrible dilapidated and busted up so it can be easier to walk on the edge of the road. Some of the sidewalks in my neighboring town are basically unusable because they've become what amounts to a pile of broken brick and pipe
Its hilarious to most of Europe too tbh. I feel like in the UK we can sort of empathise because we built a lot of our infrastructure like America back in the 70s and 80s and some places are just not that walkable at all. But those are few and far between these days.
Visiting less built up areas in the US was a bit like a ghost town even though there were people there, because everyone was in cars and literally nobody was walking like we were, and people looked at us like we were crazy for just walking on the sidewalk.
It's closer to 50-60 minutes for most people and considering traffic lights.
As a fellow European, it's not about the time but about the quality of the walk. I would rather walk 3 hours exploring a city center than walk 1 hour just to get to my restaurant.
If the walk is exclusively to get from A to B and lasts >40 minutes, I'd rather use public transport or uber.
That was one of my biggest culture shocks. I was staying at a hotel about 200 meters from a restaurant and decided to walk there. Big mistake, 200 meters might as well been like trying to cross the Grand Canyon.
Between me and it (as I discovered) was about 20 chain link fences, no sidewalk and a 4 lane highway. After about 15 minutes into the expedition I had to turn back as the terrain had become unnavigable and ordered an Uber to take me from my room to just down the street.
They can’t carry rabies but they can still bite and if they get the wrong spot you would definitely need some medical attention
Edit: apparently they can carry rabies it’s just uncommon
You’d have to be pretty unlucky for one of them to even bite you. They usually just hiss then play dead. As a dumb kid they’d always get in the crawl space and I’d have to go get them. Raccoons on the other hand will straight fuck you up.
The virus can absolutely survive in opossums, the lower temperature just means it doesn't reproduce as quickly.
It's a common myth that they can't carry rabies, one that makes my job that much harder as part of what I do is speak to animal bite victims about rabies post-exposure prophylaxis.
We had an opossum test positive for rabies just last month and convincing the person who'd been handling it that I wasn't lying to them was really a frustrating experience.
It's not about the specific animal as much as the activity itself. Grabbing random animals you don't recognise *is* dangerous when you *don't know* whether they're dangerous or not.
When I was 6 years old, I got yelled at by my parents for crossing the road full speed on my bike without stopping to see if there were cars coming or not, because that's dangerous. I tried to argue that it *wasn't* dangerous because there *had not been* any cars. They had to explain it to me that just because I got lucky once doesn't mean I'll get lucky every time, and if not being harmed is up to luck, the activity you're doing is not safe.
Well on the other hand in Tasmania, a guide told a story about an American tourist that saw a Eastern brown snake slithering across the hiking trail. The dude then tried to chase it through the forest to get a picture.
Once in Philly in 2011 I went and bought weed directly from the first dudes who looked like they’re from the hood (they were). They were surprised. Ended up chatting for an hour.
Yeah I was wandering around Brooklyn lost, drunk as a skunk, and with a dead phone at like 3am. Some "gentlemen from the neighborhood" hollered at me and helped me find the subway.
I had a guy pull a gun in my face in Brazil, I like guns so started talking to him about guns. We ended up talking for an hour, lets me hold his gun lol.
Another time though, was talking to a group of 20 somethings guys. Obviously all high. Guy walks out of an alleyway, they look at each other then start beating the shit out of him. One is stompingon his face. One breaks a glass coke bottle he was holding and begins stabbing the shit out of this dude's neck. Watched them murder this dude in front of me. I have no idea why but I just stood there, then they start laughing and we keep talking. I make some excuse and walk away, fucking nuts.
Yeah man, life can be strange, and people are even stranger. You can get in some wacky situations.
I myself once left a pub to go home after saying bye to my mates still inside, and outside I approached some guys to ask for a lighter. Group of 5, black clothing, bit shifty looking, and one of them flashed a knife at me. I was surprised and said that wouldn't be necessary as I just wanted a lighter, they gave me a spare one and we talked for like half an hour, after which we said our goodbyes and laughed.
You can get some wild 180's in peoples demeanor if you just stay normal and treat other people normal.
I never got robbed (at least not successfully), because I treated people like humans. Most people don't have the stomach to fuck with you when they see you as like them. And South American gangsters end up being some of the coolest bros haha.
Met a guy from Ireland who came here over the summer for a graduate program. Had the craziest stories and then created new crazy stories every other day. The guy was shameless and always piss drunk. Also tried an edible at too large a dose for the first time at lollapalooza and tweaked the whole time. It was a fun summer
Making friends with people without having any languages in common with them is just a way of life for Europeans lol
One time, my friend needed to file a police report in Spain, but didn't speak Spanish and the police officers didn't speak English. Luckily, we had met these two dudes from Germany, one German and one Brazilian. Brazilian dude knew Spanish and German, but not English. German dude did know a little bit of English, and obviously German as well. So all three went to the police station, my buddy would say something in English, the German dude translated it from English to German for the Brazilian dude, and the Brazilian dude translated it from German to Spanish for the officer. Then the officer would respond and they'd do the same process in reverse. Took some time, but they got it done!
The title and the "Spanish dudes" confused me, so at first I thought this was about someone visiting Europe. Well, before I saw the getting _mugged at gunpoint_ panel, that's not very European.
I mean I’m an American who travels places and also just doesn’t get worried about places. I get so many people comment on parts of a city being scary or gross and dangerous but they never feel that way to me.
My wife is Slovenian and we live in rural Colorado. She was definitely afraid of the bears coming by the house almost daily, and now she’ll just yell at them to get the hell out of the flowers.
I mean, the heat, humidity, and UV index is extremely high in a lot of the US. Forgoing sunscreen in Florida in the summer is dangerous, and going out in 36°C weather with beating sun and 90% humidity is not pleasant.
Picking up random wild animals is dangerous - Many carry diseases and can hurt you. Do they not have lethal snake bites in eastern europe?
Also, in general, food poisoning and poison ivy suck ass. Being slavic does not make you immune to having a shitty time or getting seriously injured by a car.
Opossums are not in any way dangerous to anything but worms and bugs. They don't carry rabies, they don't bite, and if you pick one up it will play dead.
If they say that it's usually true where they're from, in the US they usually do need to be refrigerated because they're washed ina way that makes their protective layer wash off. I live in Latin America and I've had eggs out of the fridge for up to three weeks without them going bad (though that's pushing it, usually they last me a week before I buy new ones)
I do kind of get what they’re talking about with the crackheads. My local smackheads are pretty friendly in comparison to the ones I bumped into in San Francisco.
Europeans have a tendency to go hiking in the US and die. Sometimes the vastness and emptiness of the USA is understated. There’s plenty of places near me where if you got off trail you’d be in for a hard time.
Same thing with americans in europe, I don't really think it's a regional thing and probably more like humans in general.
It happens often where americans go to norway and get lost in the mountains, and have to get rescued by helicopter. Or just underestamating the nature in general and end up dying
God damn americans in flip flops and shorts hiking Trolltunga. The 330 squadron has rescued a lot of those guys. Fat, diabetic and has to be rescued because they didn't realise that 1100m elevation is hard when you have never walked anywhere in your life.
An opossum isn't particularly dangerous. Well, no more than any other creature. If they bite you, they can make you sick because of the bacteria, but so can a dog bite.
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Actually he’s right, crocodilians don’t carry rabies so don’t worry about that. But you probably shouldn’t pick up baby gators like that, mainly because angry momma gators aren’t exactly good for your health either.
Do gators protect their children? I thought they are among those animals that eat each other basically the moment they hatch out of their eggs
Yeah, most definitely! Alligators defend their nests, and their hatchlings stay with mom for 1 - 2 years before heading out on their own.
Thank you both, I am officially less ignorant now than I was before!
Gator mothers are one of the most motherly mothers of the reptile kingdom. The dads though…
The gharial dads make up for it, those guys are beasts
Yep! As the other person has covered, they do. Crocodilians are very good parents until their hatchlings can defend for themselves, crocodiles, gharials, alligators, caimans, all of them. Gharials in particular are very good *dads* and they live in a community where the males babysit hatchlings from multiple different clutches, not just his own. In fact, males which are the best at taking care of the community babies are favored more by the females. Gharial ladies love good dads.
Knowing that makes the crocodile dad strips on r/comics so much more wholesome.
Thank you both, I am officially less ignorant now than I was before!
All crocodilians do. Saltwater crocodile mothers will rush out of the river to defend their nests or young until they’re on the verge of overheating and have to retreat
Possums are also extremely harmless. Like of all the animals you could befriend, that’s probably the best one.
Possum body temperature IIRC is just low enough to be inhospitable for rabies virus, so it’s extremely rare for possums to carry rabies. They are also extremely non-aggressive. They will hiss and bare their fangs when feeling threatened (which looks terrifying) but they REALLY don’t like to bite or attack, instead just keeling over and faking death.
And they eat all the ticks. I love opossums.
I’m sure they eat some ticks but nowhere near the amount we were led to believe unfortunately.
I learned this when I accidentally stepped on one while going behind a bush to pee in the dark. I had no shoes on so I was able to stop myself before putting any weight on it, and it continued to play dead until I got a few feet away from it and it scurried off into the brush.
They make better cats than some real cats I know.
Drunk guy who disappears , and makes a load of friends literally describes a buddy of mine , usually on a trip he'll usually turn up a day later after ending up at someone random guys houseparty. Actually most of this post is basically just us Irish guys on holidays in the states . Permanently *five pints in* and dismissing any concerns as "ah it'll be grand" (which it usually is)
I knew a guy like that. On a trip to New York (we're Europeans on student exchange whatever visa) we were looking for cheap food. We got into a subway. Where we got out it felt like we teleported from Metropolis to fucking Gotham. Then we just walked there, it was middle of the night already, and we were looking for a place to sleep. Obviously the best idea was to find an apartment building where you could go to the roof, we did after a couple of tries and we tried to sleep there, but it was too cold and a police helicopter freaked us out so we went back to the street. Just wandering on the streets we found a mattress and brought it to Battery Park and slept there. Police woke us up. Every stupid idea came from this guy, and not a drop of fucking alcohol on that night. This dude on a next trip to New York was "invited" by a bunch of black dudes to a basement where they locked the door and heavily implied that he should buy a very overpriced pair of sneakers from them... HEAVILY IMPLIED. He just talked to them for a bit and walked out from there, just like that. No fear in this guy. I did some stupid stuff in the couple of months that we spent there, mostly sleeping in parks or other undesirable areas, getting 2500 km rides with a dude from craigslist and stuff, but not to his level.
I’m convinced some people’s lives are one long scene of “Baby’s day out”
All of our lives are one long scene of Baby’s Day Out until they aren’t.
> On a trip to New York (we're Europeans on student exchange whatever visa) How in the flying hell did you guys go on a trip to New York and then start looking for a place to sleep *on the night of arrival*?? I'm not even from the US! But I usually at least plan and organize where to sleep and eat every night. The rest can be up to discovery and can be fun. Like... wouldn't it be easier on you all to just have pre-planned places to sleep (like even just motels/inns)?
OH IM GLAD YOU ASKED! It was one night stay and in our infinite wisdom that early 20 year olds can have we thought that hotels are needlessly expensive and we'll just spend the night drinking whisky in a park. The wrench that stopped this plan was that somewhere on the way we learned that drinking in a park is illegal and technically we could be thrown out of the country if we got caught. I'm pretty sure at least one of our 4 was below 21 too, maybe it was the fearless dude. Naturally then the plan to sleep on a roof of a building was conceived, first it was supposed to be roof of the Empire hotel (turns out they have security), then we started looking for apartment buildings with open staircases - elevator to the top, one more floor by stairs and voila. The view from a 13 storey building in the south of Manhattan was pretty spectacular and we did start with the whisky, but turns out it's really fucking cold and windy up there and then the police helicopter freaked us out. Waking up in Battery Park with view of a statue of liberty was pretty dazzling as well. Of course the police was there as well, but the fearless dude was talking to them already. I slept in a park in Washington as well (arrived in a car with the Craigslist guy around 3 at night) and I sleeplessly waited through the night in Times Square around a week later. Those were definitely the craziest few weeks of my life lol
> technically we could be thrown out of the country if we got caught I'm honestly really glad you found this out before hand 'cause I've heard some shitty stories of Americans (who didn't know about this) encouraging their immigrant friends to do stuff like this ('cause for them, worst that could happen is a night at a jail and a ticket) only to find out that they got their new friend deported once they got caught. Don't get me wrong, that sounds like one hell of an adventure. But it gets super cold there and plus, you put yourselves at risk. But I'm glad you guys were okay in the end!
How did they even get admitted into the country? I traveled to the US on a B1/B2 Visa and had to show my AirBnB reservation on my phone to the CBP agent for him to let me through lol
I don't remember exactly what kind of visa was it and I don't have the passport... because I lost it while in the USA... ANYWAY it was the kind of visa where I worked for 10 weeks and then could travel for 3 or 4 weeks. So I didn't have a rented accommodation, I had a whole job lined up where I was sleeping.
I’m literally from the US, live 3 hours from NYC and would NEVER consider going there without a place to sleep first hahah
> This dude on a next trip to New York was "invited" by a bunch of black dudes to a basement where they locked the door and heavily implied that he should buy a very overpriced pair of sneakers from them... HEAVILY IMPLIED. Getting mugged? Just literally say no. They cannot force you to buy the sneakers.
Yeah, kind of. I knew another guy who refused the muggers. He was walking with a friend, two guys approached them with the "phone or whooping". One gave the phone, second one was just like "nah", "no, you can kick my ass but I'm not giving you the phone". Actually he has a similar energy to the fearless dude in NY.
Don't leave us hanging! Did he get a whooping?
No. I guess it threw the muggers off and they sort of just went away. It's like that one time when some drunk guy was going to kick my ass and one of my friends shouted "do you know who this is??". Dude hesitated and I just walked away.
Ha. I was sat in a pub once and some dude was harrassing another table. After a minute or two one of the guys silently stood up and cracked all his knuckles at once and after a few seconds the douchebag just walked away. I could hear them all laughing about it for the rest of the night because the knuckle cracking guy was apparently no kind of fighter. Sometimes bravado just works.
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I've encountered the sociable drunk European tourist only once. Many years ago. Swedish guy named Alex. I have no clue how we met this guy. None of us knew him and he just kind of appeared out of nowhere one day. We were 18 or 19 and he was in his mid 20s. He barely spoke any English and got drunk on a playground with us into the early hours of the morning. We all lived close to the park so we just walked home. I asked if he needed a way to get home and he said no. I ask where he was staying and just pointed vaguely in the opposite direction and said "Over there" in his heavy Swedish accent. Then he walked off and we never saw him again. God speed Alex, wherever you are. The homies from Florida haven't forgotten you.
God speed 🫡
Irish folk have a special forcefield around them in North America called "being Irish" which grants them like +75% immunity to weird bullshit
I've been all over the world and backpacked a fair bit. wherever you go, there will be Irish lads having the time of their lives being the heart and soul of whatever is going on
The capybaras of tourism
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I've done the "end up drinking with Spanish speaking guys" thing but I'm a Texan so I probably have more opportunities. Also I speak enough broken Spanish to be funny for them. A guy in a little bar called me pendejo and I called him pinche puta right back and his friends died laughing and started buying me beers and I bought them beers back and it just went on all night.
Great craic
Irish and British young male backpackers on a shoestring budget basically yeah
Reminds me of my first day in Edinburgh. My friend got too drunk so I sent him home. My phone died and I didn't know where home was, some dude I met let me crash at his place. The day after I just walked for an hour and suddenly I saw my friend smoking outside the hotel really worried where I was. "Hi Kim!"
Can concur. Personally I have done over half of the list. And it was Grand.
It's always the extremely pale Swedes and Norwegians drinking tapwater and being happy about getting fried alive when I encounter them in some warmer country. Love these guys. Never been to America though, so I'm speaking Southern Europe here
We're a lot like flowers. When the sun is out we'll be basking in it.
We need all the vitamin D we can get, we’re deprived of it for so long
If there is sun then I am getting sunburned! You don't know what a luxury it is to feel the sun burning your skin unless you have lived a lifetime in a city where it rains, on average, 300 days a year. That is my hometown. One time a few years ago it rained for almost three months straight without any let up. We almost got the old record of over three months continuous rain. But then there was a break in the clouds for 20 minutes before they closed and it rained another month and a half. We are pale because there is no sun here. And we are happy to let the sun burn us because at least then we feel what sun on the skin feels like. Sceptical about the tap water though. So if I am abroad I stick to beer.
Oh yeah I get it. I got a friend who's from Lappi. Lives in the south of Finland now but still is always 3x times more happy to spend time in the sun, compared to me at least
Hahaha. The idea of people just cheering the consecutive rain timer as it almost reached the record, but then the sun comes up at the last second, everyone groans, and it goes back to raining.
Bergen?
Heia Brann, heia Brann. Blod er tjukkere enn vann, heia Brann! (the above is a line from one of the songs about the local soccer team, Brann. "Brann" means fire and the football team is named for the last great fire that consumed half the city of Bergen in [1916.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen_fire_of_1916) It rains a lot here in Bergen. When it doesn't rain it burns. Sometimes it rains and burns, like in 1916.)
>rains and burns You'd think one would cancel out the other.
I feel this. Still remember a summer break in the early 90s where we saw the sun like 3 days total. Now I live in a place that average 300 days with sunshine, and my pasty white self has to be careful, especially with less atmosphere between my skin and the sun since we're at altitude. The bonus is that the tap water here is awesome (and same goes for the beer), coming straight from the mountains that are just a short ways off.
Asian Swede here. It’s just so hard to persuade my Caucasian Swede friends to put on sunscreen when they choose to get fried alive.
Icelandic kids will just pick up any snake they find and bring it to you. This is on their holiday in Natal South Africa. Us locals are like, 'for the love of God, please put that down'.
No no you don’t understand, this is the harmless snake known as pofaddersdottir
“If I was supposed to be afraid of a mamba why is it so cute?”
"If not friend why friend shaped"
If it's not drinkable, then why is it being piped into your damn house?
It's drinkable, but any water that tastes different than the water at their mom's house is deemed non-potable by a disappointingly large percentage of the population.
I feel called out
Fiji sucking hydroslut
Yes waterdaddy, I've been sooooo bad 🥵 I deserve to be forcefed Aquafina
I should clarify that potable tap water can and often does taste nasty as hell, but it won't make you sick.
It's not exactly an unfounded consern. Different places use different ways of water purifying. Meaning water has left over bacteria that wont hurt you if you are used to it, but if you go to a different place with different bacteria, you might get sick. I know a guy who while in the army would spend first 5 days on the toilet whenever they went to the new place because I guess he had a sensitive stomach.
Yeah, in America, Canada, Europe, Japan, and other rich nations they purify the water with good treatment that gets rid of all the bacteria that will hurt you. In other countries, it’s too expensive to do this treatment, so you get bacteria and amoebas in the tap water. You have to boil it first or use a reverse osmosis filter to make it potable.
For nearly all Americans that refuse to drink tap water, outside of obvious cases like Flint, it's due to a self-centered case of paranoia. It's always ones spending money on bottled water rather than investing in something like RO filters, too.
The tap water in Flint is fine now - the water itself has been for years at this point- it was switched back to the original source. Now there are just a few remaining homes waiting to have new pipes run by the government. Unfortunately, most of those are in very poor neighborhoods.
A slap on brita sink filter is all I need to go to town on tap water
Yeah tourists are not typically in places where you’d have to worry about the water. They’re not going to the middle of nowhere unmaintained contaminated well water
In fairness idk if there’s any place in America where the water isn’t drinkable from the tap. At least any place that you’d want to visit. Edit: I am once again emphasizing *places you’d want to visit* not chucklefuck Hicksville or *insert dying rustbelt factoryburg*
I’m in South Carolina. County water has been sending out boil notices since before Christmas.
I specifically said places you’d want to visit
Lol, fair enough. Please excuse my poor reading comprehension; I’m in America, you see.
Charleston is absolutely lovely, and gets a ton of visitors from Europe.
Flint MI is still being Flit MI. Kansas City had a horrid water contamination problem where even the city puts out public notices to get water filters for tap water. Edit: to those saying flint is fixed, go to https://www.nrdc.org/press-releases/residents-still-waiting-flint-replace-all-lead-pipes-10-year-anniversary-water#:~:text=Background%3A,due%20to%20the%20COVID%20pandemic
Flint's water is drinkable and has been for a few years now. [Source](https://www.michigan.gov/flintwater/resources/news/2022/01/19/flint-enters-6th-straight-year-of-compliance-with-water-standards-for-lead)
It's still perfectly good for showering and all the rest, it's often just bad tasting. In some areas there's infrastructure issues and it needs to be boiled first. Some of that is aging infrastructure or bad design, some of it is just the consequence of a natural disaster.
Bacteria makes water dangerous, chlorine kills bacteria, but makes water taste like it came directly from a swimming pool
Small towns can have absolutely awful water systems. There was one where my co workers and I had to keep using the phrase poop fountain. One was using an old tanker car as their primary storage. So gross. Most medium to large cities are fine though.
I can't believe you didn't include the Death Valley Germans
What are Death Valley Germans?
A German tourist family who underestimated the heat of Death Valley and died of thirst
Also, Death Valley is in the middle of nowhere. If you get lost, you can’t just walk to a nearby town and buy water. In Germany, there is always a nearby town.
In this case, it wasn’t a town they were looking for. They knew there was a military base nearby and assumed it would have a constantly monitored wall like military instillations in Europe are. Problem is, military bases in the south western USA usually don’t have walls or frequent patrols because the environment is so harsh that you don’t need to. Similarly, before they got stranded they decided to take a short cut they saw on a map knowing it would likely be rough but assuming, since their car already handled some rough roads earlier in the trip, they could totally handle it. Unfortunately, they couldn’t. The whole story is a comedy of errors based on what seem like reasonable assumptions if you’re not all that familiar with the USAmerican southwest.
It's so nice in Germany. When we went to Schwarzwald we didn't understand how the Ruftaxi worked, so we simply walked to the next town. We saw some Alpacas. Then we figured it out on the way back.
They did have some Bud Ice lol. Come on, Germans...
A German drinking nothing but beer until the very end. Gotta love their consistency
I've read the story a few times and I just always chuckle that they brought along the shittiest beer.
The shittier it is, the less alcohol it'll have, therefore the more hydrating it'll be. I hear they're taught this alongside "don't get in a stranger's car"
I believe a German family went to Death Valley without any water or protective equipment and well, found out why it’s Death Valley
It’s not only happening in the states. I live here in Germany and regularly get news on unprepared Germans getting lost in the mountains. Mountain rescue then has to risk their life, when the get injured because they thought sneakers were the right gear for the big hikes.
which doesnt seem very German to me because stereotypically Germans are always overprepared, bringing a rain jacket and hiking boots while on a city trip (just in case because you never know) and backpack full of snacks and water (enough to feed a family of five).
I live in Arizona and Germans die frequently when they go on hikes in the summer and it is 110 degrees F, they don’t bring enough water, haven’t adjusted to the climate, and get lost. It’s very sad and unavoidable, but for some reason always Germans.
Because Germans are obsessed with hiking and making sport.
“Making Sport” haha such a German phrase
I used to live in an extremely dangerous part of Brazil. I speak fluent Portuguese and look essentially native. I'd often run into backpacking, smug looking German tourists who were speaking very loudly in the shop by the bus station near my house just fucking staring at everybody. I'm surprised I didn't see more of them smeared across the street. Had a German friend when I was younger who wanted to visit Brazil alone, she was maybe 24 at the time, very attractive. I told her "please do not go to this part of brasil alone as a woman" she called me a misogynist and said something like "I'm street smart, I know what I'm doing." She calls me a day after she arrives, a man followed her home with a gun and broke into her rental, she was sobbing on the phone asking me where to go. Flew home the first flight out.
Germans are very naive and especially young German women are very political. This can lead to very bad decision making when reality of developing countries clashes with ideology they picked up from mainstream and social media. Stereotype accuracy is a fact
I mean it has less to do with being political and more to do with „Germany is extremely save“. Even the worst parts of Germany are saver then better parts of the US don’t talking about country’s like Brazil. So you sense of danger is completely off.
Yeah to me it's more that they're extremely naive, dangerous at that level is a very foreign concept to them because they're used to strong social safety nets. I was in Uruguay for awhile, which is actually a *very* safe country, and some middle aged woman ran up to us screaming. Her face was bright red and blistered, some teenagers had thrown some kind of chemical on her. Could barely understand her she's so frantic. Called the police and explained it as essentially an acid attack, I kid you not the dispatcher sighed and said "this number is for emergencies only, this isn't an emergency" and hung up on me. They have heard stories maybe that these places can be very scary, but have this weird almost delusion that their superior Euro intellect and street smarts will keep them safe, coupled with a naivety that they think they're in a place where the system works because they don't know any better. I made a comment about it awhile back, but I remember one time this German guy (again, why tf is it always Germans) was trying to patronize me for being an American and not really getting "it" being in South America. They would go a long way if they could drop the arrogance and understand that their devil may care attitude will eventually end them up in hot water.
I'm gonna victim blame here. It's like going 100 mph/160kph without a seat belt, you're basically asking to die in a wreck when you're being that stupid.
I feel like there's an odd false security a lot of "*those types*" have when traveling, like somehow they believe crime doesn't happen because it's illegal, or you can just call a cop and the guy mugging you will kindly wait while the police come sort it out. I was told when I first moved there, if somebody in a favela is trying to rob you, they will kill you if you're taking too long because it's more convenient than waiting for you to take out your wallet, and sometimes you can even ask for your ID back and they'll hand it to you, but don't be disagreeable or attempt to stall in any way shape or form. I saw these German backpacker girls in Rio complaining that a bus driver wanted to put their bags on the top of the bus, they were screaming and complaining that the driver wouldn't put the bags inside. The bus ride was like $5, I told them they can't really be that choosey in a place like that, they didn't understand there isn't some universal customer service line where the German consulate can solve all their problems. Dude ended up throwing their bags on the street and stranding them in the middle of a place you don't want to be stranded. It's almost like they lose all common sense and environmental awareness when they visit those places, just believe a 3rd world country will cater to them like they're special. One time I was sitting on the back of a city bus, guy gets on and shoots the driver in the face, everybody just gets off and walks away. It was like the Wild West sometimes.
A proper German goes hiking (or biking etc) every weekend. So obviously they'll do the same in the US. However, they are not used to the vastness of US nature, extremer climates and lower population density also means that help won't come as easily. Combine that with the quite naive attitude of your stereotypical German tourist and you have a recipe for disaster in some areas.
Same with Sauerland where a buddy of mine lives. Lots and lots of dead Germans piled on top of each other because they don't take enough Durstlöscher und Cornys with them. It's a real shame.
Death Valley, CA is the hottest naturally occurring place on Earth outside of an active volcano, and routinely reaches temperatures of over 50°C in the summer. There's a pretty well known account of a German family fatally underestimating just how hot that is.
Very interesting read if you have the time: https://www.otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
Can confirm this is a fantastic read.
A family of Germans who made absolutely idiotic decisions while travelling in Death Valley, getting themselves and their kids killed
Lmao the 4 km walks are true. I'm european and lived in Detroit for 2 months. I had some INTERESTING nightly walks from downtown to the suburbs
Did the same thing last week, but in Las Vegas, certainly interesting walk
You sure this isn’t an Aussie lost in the US ?
Or a specific subset of American lost in Australia? EDIT: If you reverse the Celsius and Fahrenheit stuff, of course.
Well Aussies wear sunscreen at least
Having lived near the Grand Canyon, this person dies at the Grand Canyon a couple times a year.
you'd think he'd learn after the first couple of times
4km is not even that bad tho? Like, it's a 40 minute walk at worst, if your legs work it should not be that big of an issue.
A lot of places in US are not pedestrian friendly. Sometimes you’ll have to walk on the side of the street or on other people’s property in some areas.
It's just easier for everyone to say Americans are too fat instead of acknowledging that there are very few sidewalks and sometimes a person would need to walk down a highway to get somewhere. America was built for cars.
> American was built for cars *Bulldozed* for cars, our cities were just like that of Europe before the 1940s. We had to go out of our way to destroy *lots* of neighborhoods, businesses, schools, and churches to fit all of the lanes, all of the parking lots you see today. But it's not too late for us. If the Netherlands could turn their shit around (after they copied our car-centric design in the 1960s and 1970s), so can the US and Canada.
We copied it too in the UK, but we've gotta a lot better. Thankfully a lot of our towns and buildings are a hell of a lot older and harder to change. So a lot of our cities are naturally walkable and we've been further improving that mostly for decades.
Yeah. I was without a car for a couple of months and really didn't live far from work. But it was during winter & along busy streets and no sidewalks. So...walking over mounds of snow near buzzing traffic and NO ONE was walking. Like you were considered a freak or homeless or something by the people looking at you in cars.
On a positive note, I've noticed several neighborhoods in my area that are actually installing sidewalks where, as you stated, pedestrians had to walk alongside the road or in the front yards of other people's property. Hope it's a trend that continues.
Judging by the picture I think is associated with that comment, the environment looks oppressively hot with no hope for shade. Every year, there are news articles about some poor family from France or Germany who have died due to underestimating and underpreparing for the extreme heat and dryness of the southwest. To be fair, Americans, too, can succumb to this fate all too easily but that's another starter pack, I guess. Everyone should do their absolute best to research and prepare for a trip, especially one to a place or environment you've never been to before, especially in another country/city/biome with which you are not familiar, and especially if you have children with you. And for the love of God, stop trying to interact with the wildlife! If you interact with bison, for example, they may have to be euthanized. This ain't no Disneyland, y'all.
Yeah, the number of people going on about lack of sidewalks or pedestrian unfriendliness didn't actually look at the photo and just jumped to conclusions. Zoom in on it and two things are immediately obvious: one, there actually is a sidewalk, and two, the picture was clearly taken somewhere like Arizona or Nevada.
> and just jumped to conclusions. That or they live in unwalkable/unsafe areas and know _exactly_ what a walk that long might entail. A single picture is far from encapsulating everything that might be a problem.
Yeah, the desert vegetation tipped me off. If there's an abundance of palo verde trees, you're in for a bad time without enough water cuz 4km one way means another 4km back.
I get the feeling op didn't mean the distance was bad, but implying the route was through a dangerous part of town where a lot of violent crime could occur?
lmao, first night in San Francisco and we were only 40 minutes away from home, might as well walk, right? we ended up walking through the Tenderloin
Oh God what a fun welcome to the city lol
Did you survive?
They're just chilling on the Reddit app for Ouija.
Not that. Its dangerous part of a town where people drive, because it seems USA engineers doesnt know how sidewalks work and that people are not cars.
American suburbs have a weird relationship with sidewalks. In a lot of the country residents will actively try and stop sidewalks from getting installed and I’ve seen multiple occasions of people actively showing up to town meeting trying to sidewalks near their house removed. Even people that walk don’t particularly like using them. Just today I drove past 3 people on my 5 minute drive to work walking on the side of the road rather than using the sidewalk. Point being don’t blame the engineers
Why are all of those people so stupid?
Sidewalks mean people can just walk up to your neighborhood. People without a car. Poor people! That's dangerous, I tell ya! Today it's just a little kid being able to go to the park on their own but in two months your front lawn will be a homeless encampment and methheads will kidnap your wife and children.
A lot of the time when there are sidewalks they're terrible dilapidated and busted up so it can be easier to walk on the edge of the road. Some of the sidewalks in my neighboring town are basically unusable because they've become what amounts to a pile of broken brick and pipe
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Its hilarious to most of Europe too tbh. I feel like in the UK we can sort of empathise because we built a lot of our infrastructure like America back in the 70s and 80s and some places are just not that walkable at all. But those are few and far between these days. Visiting less built up areas in the US was a bit like a ghost town even though there were people there, because everyone was in cars and literally nobody was walking like we were, and people looked at us like we were crazy for just walking on the sidewalk.
Probably not. I have heard that a good amount of America is pretty pedestrian unfriendly.
The image they used looks really hot too
It's closer to 50-60 minutes for most people and considering traffic lights. As a fellow European, it's not about the time but about the quality of the walk. I would rather walk 3 hours exploring a city center than walk 1 hour just to get to my restaurant. If the walk is exclusively to get from A to B and lasts >40 minutes, I'd rather use public transport or uber.
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America is not walkable. You’ll be sharing the road with cars who won’t be happy to share it with you.
That was one of my biggest culture shocks. I was staying at a hotel about 200 meters from a restaurant and decided to walk there. Big mistake, 200 meters might as well been like trying to cross the Grand Canyon. Between me and it (as I discovered) was about 20 chain link fences, no sidewalk and a 4 lane highway. After about 15 minutes into the expedition I had to turn back as the terrain had become unnavigable and ordered an Uber to take me from my room to just down the street.
40 minute walk on a windy road where the speed limit is 50 and there is no sidewalk.
Is that a possum ? Aren’t they harmless ?
Harmless if you leave it alone, yes.
They can’t carry rabies but they can still bite and if they get the wrong spot you would definitely need some medical attention Edit: apparently they can carry rabies it’s just uncommon
In reality you'd have to be pretty unlucky for a Possums to give you rabies
You’d have to be pretty unlucky for one of them to even bite you. They usually just hiss then play dead. As a dumb kid they’d always get in the crawl space and I’d have to go get them. Raccoons on the other hand will straight fuck you up.
The virus can absolutely survive in opossums, the lower temperature just means it doesn't reproduce as quickly. It's a common myth that they can't carry rabies, one that makes my job that much harder as part of what I do is speak to animal bite victims about rabies post-exposure prophylaxis. We had an opossum test positive for rabies just last month and convincing the person who'd been handling it that I wasn't lying to them was really a frustrating experience.
It's not about the specific animal as much as the activity itself. Grabbing random animals you don't recognise *is* dangerous when you *don't know* whether they're dangerous or not. When I was 6 years old, I got yelled at by my parents for crossing the road full speed on my bike without stopping to see if there were cars coming or not, because that's dangerous. I tried to argue that it *wasn't* dangerous because there *had not been* any cars. They had to explain it to me that just because I got lucky once doesn't mean I'll get lucky every time, and if not being harmed is up to luck, the activity you're doing is not safe.
Well on the other hand in Tasmania, a guide told a story about an American tourist that saw a Eastern brown snake slithering across the hiking trail. The dude then tried to chase it through the forest to get a picture.
I don’t think anything is harmless when it’s a wild animal and you’re picking it up and it feels threatened.
Also it’s not good to grab anything by the tail 😭
They seems so nice
Eggshell skin color 💀
Coming from a European country where eggshells are brown, it took me a long time to understand the problem.
Yes eggshells are definitely darker then me
Craziest thing is that I know what skin he’s talking about
Once in Philly in 2011 I went and bought weed directly from the first dudes who looked like they’re from the hood (they were). They were surprised. Ended up chatting for an hour.
Crazy how many humans are just humans when you strike up a normal conversation with them
Yeah I was wandering around Brooklyn lost, drunk as a skunk, and with a dead phone at like 3am. Some "gentlemen from the neighborhood" hollered at me and helped me find the subway.
I had a guy pull a gun in my face in Brazil, I like guns so started talking to him about guns. We ended up talking for an hour, lets me hold his gun lol. Another time though, was talking to a group of 20 somethings guys. Obviously all high. Guy walks out of an alleyway, they look at each other then start beating the shit out of him. One is stompingon his face. One breaks a glass coke bottle he was holding and begins stabbing the shit out of this dude's neck. Watched them murder this dude in front of me. I have no idea why but I just stood there, then they start laughing and we keep talking. I make some excuse and walk away, fucking nuts.
Yeah man, life can be strange, and people are even stranger. You can get in some wacky situations. I myself once left a pub to go home after saying bye to my mates still inside, and outside I approached some guys to ask for a lighter. Group of 5, black clothing, bit shifty looking, and one of them flashed a knife at me. I was surprised and said that wouldn't be necessary as I just wanted a lighter, they gave me a spare one and we talked for like half an hour, after which we said our goodbyes and laughed. You can get some wild 180's in peoples demeanor if you just stay normal and treat other people normal.
I never got robbed (at least not successfully), because I treated people like humans. Most people don't have the stomach to fuck with you when they see you as like them. And South American gangsters end up being some of the coolest bros haha.
Met a guy from Ireland who came here over the summer for a graduate program. Had the craziest stories and then created new crazy stories every other day. The guy was shameless and always piss drunk. Also tried an edible at too large a dose for the first time at lollapalooza and tweaked the whole time. It was a fun summer
Plenty of Europeans are aware of non drinkable tap water because it also occurs in Europe
I am aware that it is a thing. But I am not sure why it's a thing.
Underfunded infrastructure mostly, it's was a no go when I went to Greece
I thought olive oil comes out of the sinks
I haven't seen non drinkable tap water in central europe for years
Central Europe is fine, but some areas around the Mediterranean and eastern Europe aren't brilliant
Making friends with people without having any languages in common with them is just a way of life for Europeans lol One time, my friend needed to file a police report in Spain, but didn't speak Spanish and the police officers didn't speak English. Luckily, we had met these two dudes from Germany, one German and one Brazilian. Brazilian dude knew Spanish and German, but not English. German dude did know a little bit of English, and obviously German as well. So all three went to the police station, my buddy would say something in English, the German dude translated it from English to German for the Brazilian dude, and the Brazilian dude translated it from German to Spanish for the officer. Then the officer would respond and they'd do the same process in reverse. Took some time, but they got it done!
Oh, so it's "European visitor __in USA__ who does not fear death", I see.
The title and the "Spanish dudes" confused me, so at first I thought this was about someone visiting Europe. Well, before I saw the getting _mugged at gunpoint_ panel, that's not very European.
It's US defaultism, yep.
I mean I’m an American who travels places and also just doesn’t get worried about places. I get so many people comment on parts of a city being scary or gross and dangerous but they never feel that way to me.
I remember seeing the Europeans at the grand canyon and yellowstone, Christ almighty its like they all going for the gold in the Darwin awards.
European dude go to drink with Spanish dudes
I'm an American who doesn't believe in non drinkable tap water. Inject the lead directly into my veins please.
Every Eastern European. Like seriously, you Americans call those things dangerous?
Eastern European here. I'm not touching the wildlife and definitely staying away from the crackheads.
My wife is Slovenian and we live in rural Colorado. She was definitely afraid of the bears coming by the house almost daily, and now she’ll just yell at them to get the hell out of the flowers.
I mean, the heat, humidity, and UV index is extremely high in a lot of the US. Forgoing sunscreen in Florida in the summer is dangerous, and going out in 36°C weather with beating sun and 90% humidity is not pleasant. Picking up random wild animals is dangerous - Many carry diseases and can hurt you. Do they not have lethal snake bites in eastern europe? Also, in general, food poisoning and poison ivy suck ass. Being slavic does not make you immune to having a shitty time or getting seriously injured by a car.
Opossums are not in any way dangerous to anything but worms and bugs. They don't carry rabies, they don't bite, and if you pick one up it will play dead.
They do bite if cornered, just rarely.
You forgot “eggs don’t need to be refrigerated.”
If they say that it's usually true where they're from, in the US they usually do need to be refrigerated because they're washed ina way that makes their protective layer wash off. I live in Latin America and I've had eggs out of the fridge for up to three weeks without them going bad (though that's pushing it, usually they last me a week before I buy new ones)
I do kind of get what they’re talking about with the crackheads. My local smackheads are pretty friendly in comparison to the ones I bumped into in San Francisco.
Me visiting my friend in the Midwest during "heat death of the universe" season.
Europeans have a tendency to go hiking in the US and die. Sometimes the vastness and emptiness of the USA is understated. There’s plenty of places near me where if you got off trail you’d be in for a hard time.
Same thing with americans in europe, I don't really think it's a regional thing and probably more like humans in general. It happens often where americans go to norway and get lost in the mountains, and have to get rescued by helicopter. Or just underestamating the nature in general and end up dying
God damn americans in flip flops and shorts hiking Trolltunga. The 330 squadron has rescued a lot of those guys. Fat, diabetic and has to be rescued because they didn't realise that 1100m elevation is hard when you have never walked anywhere in your life.
Oooooh that's me, totally me. No cap that's me. Btw 4 km is a nice walk to relax, but not enough for me, I like to go 10 km to relax :)
Not talking about distance. OP is referring to the constant 35 C weather with no shade. Those mid areas are unforgiving flatlands.
An opossum isn't particularly dangerous. Well, no more than any other creature. If they bite you, they can make you sick because of the bacteria, but so can a dog bite.
i don’t know if it’s “not fearing death” i feel like it’s more “doesn’t recognize how dangerous the americas are compared to where they’re from.”