"What is something popular in your country that you absolutely don't have interest in?"
Why Not Let It Be A Surprise?
"Gender reveal party."- SuvenPan
Fascinating, But Inhumane?
"Bull fighting"- Mrfister7377
Season 2 Episode 1 Spain GIF by National Geographic ChannelGiphyThere Is Better Coffee In Canada
"Tim Hortons."- dearest-ribwich
Unless Being Coached By Ted Lasso...
"Football."
"I tag along to matches with a mate from time to time but it really is like the scene out of the IT Crowd."- Philster07
angry mtv GIF by HacklockBig Money, Big Money... Just Not Mine...
"Gambling."
"Everybody uses slot machines but it's not my thing."- runaway_train35
Hot Cocoa In The Lodge Will Do...
"Skiing."
"I'm Swiss."
"I know how to do it, I've done a lot of it, but no thanks."- Ruggiard
Saturday Night Live Nbc GIF by HULUGiphyNot Always Indicative Of Domestic Happiness...
"Marriages that are full of spectacle, instagram stories and tons of people."
"I don't even care about marriage that much, but when I do, I want it to be just with the people I actually care about."
"I don't want to give a show."- RoguishBaron
It's easy to see how something commonplace in one country might not elicit the same level of fascination to locals as it does foreigners.
Though based on the selections above, it's fascinating to note how many pet peeves seem to be universal.
Proving that though oceans and mountains may divide us, we're not so different after all.
I'm always up for a some new flavors. So tell me what I can whip up.
Portions
Hungry Food GIF by pikaoleGiphy"Rice cooker meals. Throw your rice, some chicken or pork, veggies, seasonings and stock into the rice cooker and wait for it to finish. Most any rice cooker can cook meat and veggies at the same time with the rice, just gotta watch your portions."
Wage_slave
'petto al limone'
"Italy here. you can find lots of different types of frozen pasta and pizzas at the grocery store. A fresh and fast dosh that I cook often in 'petto al limone' (lemon chicken breast). You take some sliced chicken breast, you cover it with a thin layer of flour, the put it into a pan with some olive oil and while it's cooking squeeze a bit of lemon juice on the chicken."
"Or, I don't know if it's known/popular here, 'uova al pomodoro' (tomato eggs). Take a pan and drizzle a bit of olive oil in it (we put it everywhere). When it's hot add tomato sauce and maybe a bit of water. After a bit ad your eggs and let them cook. your dish is done."
That_Biribiola
Holes & Tibs
"It's called Injera. I'm American, but mom is Ethiopian and you make it in advance. It's basically flat pita bread that's soft and has a lot of holes. Tastes freaking great too."
ultmore
"I was in my late 20s when I was 1st introduced to Ethiopian food when I lived in the DC area. My brother worked with some Ethiopian chaps who kept asking him why he never ate their food....and they introduced him to their favorite local Ethiopian restaurant. He in turn took me there... the rest was history. I could eat Tibs and Injera at least once a week."
ImAScurred1138
'freselle'
"In Italy we make 'freselle.' It’s a kind of dry-hard bread that you wet with water to make it soft, then you put a salad on top of the bread. The salad is made with diced tomatoes, tuna, onions and olive oil. Very quick and easy dish, eaten in the summer!"
Elettra_of
"Still say the only good thing about Tuscan bread is that no one wants to eat it, so you always have plenty left over for Ribollita (which is fantastic)."
BattleHall
The Thing
pasta cooking GIFGiphy"Pasta with Thing. Also Pyttipanna (it's small bits of potatoes, onions, and mystery meat that you buy frozen in big bags and heat up in a pan. Often with fried eggs and pickled red beets. It's really good.)"
ipakookapi
"Ah, in the US that is called a hash. Most frequently seen with corned (ie salted, boiled, and for this application inexpensive, finely ground) beef."
TheyHungre
How have I never had most of these things?
Patty Fry
space browns GIFGiphy"Also pretty fast:"
"Rösti. You grate potatoes (raw) and onions, mix them with egg (or without depending on the type of potato), add some parsley, salt, and maybe pepper. Then you fry little pattys in a pan with lots of oil."
Cheshire1234
Favorite
"Shakshuka. I like mine spicy so I usually add a hot pepper of some sorts. You can add tomato paste if you want more tomato flavor. Honestly this is a basics recipe. Once you've got this down, feel free to experiment! Also you can finish it off in the oven if you prefer your eggs baked, but it does take longer. Really good with a piece of bread or pita."
f**k_ya_bud
Good Taste
"Putanesca. It's a pasta sauce made out of anchovies, olives, onions and tomato paste (there are variations)."
Shinylittlelamp
"Gotta love the etymology of that dish. 'In the style of a sl*t.' As in, it tastes like it took all day to cook, but was actually so easy to make the wife could spend all day entertaining gentlemen callers and then whip out a delicious meal before the husband got home."
Probonoh
5 Minutes
"I like to eat salads when I don't want to cook: lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, tuna (or salmon, mozzarella, canned beans, hard boiled eggs you choose) and the you add salt, olive oil, pepper and vinegar if you want. You can make it in 5 minutes and you don't even need to cook (except for the eggs) though it might be a problem if you have children who don't eat vegetables. A few others are pasta (as someone else suggested) and omelette."
elix01
simple and delicious...
hummus GIF by Leon DeniseGiphy"Hummus and a pita pocket. simple and delicious. I mean at that point I think it's a snack not a meal. But in the same sense that a hot dog can be either or."
tomixcomics
Now I'm super hungry. Great.
What would you add to this list, readers? Let us know in the comments below.
"What's an incredibly American thing americans don't realize is american?"
Americans respond differently than people from other nations when it comes to indicating where they're from.
Location Location Location
"I used to work in a call Center that took calls from Americans and Canadians. I’d ask 'Where are you from, Canada or the US?' Canadians would say 'Canada' and American would say 'Texas' or 'New York' etc. Never ever would they reply with their country name."
– fancyllamapants-
Sticking To Specifics
"Might just be me, but I do notice when you ask Americans on the internet where they're from, they reply with either a state or a city instead of their country."
"The thing is, it doesn't cause any confusion, since most people know most American states and at least the major cities."
"You don't often see an Indonesian person, for example, say they're from West Java. Just that they're from Indonesia."
– FlygonsGonnaFly
More Background
"I also find that Americans often include where they were born. For example "I'm from Philly but originally from Jersey.'"
"Edit: I understand that the US is big and has many different regions. I'm Canadian and find that Canadians typically don't answer that way, despite being very large."
– RedSpikeyThing
Some people are dumbfounded by these the following behaviors and tendencies.
Shortened Pronunciation
"Its the American pronunciation of 'squirrel' that gets me. Here its a two syllable word. 'Sqwe-rell' kinda. But when my American gf says it it comes out kinda like 'sqwurl.' The first time she said it I thought she said 'swirl'. Its just one syllable."
– DonSmo
Favored Flavor
"Ranch. I never knew ranch was just an American thing until recently."
– BlocBoyBaloo
Time To Close Out The Check
"Not having to ask for the bill."
– Ok_Independence_5025
Complete Trust
"Handing your credit card to a stranger, having them walk away, swipe it, then bring it back to like they didn’t just put a down payment on a new house with it…"
– browncoat47
European Academics
"Universities in Europe are simply institutions of higher learning, nothing more."
"Americans would be surprised by the cultural differences when it comes to university education. There are no athletic teams, no Greek life, no 30 foot climbing walls at universities in Europe. You come to school to learn and leave when your classes are over for the day. If you want to study, you can go to the library, but there is very little that a university offers outside of academia."
– sharksedition
Simple Dish
"Mixing three different canned foods together and calling it a casserole."
– calls_you_a_bellend
Transactions that seem normal to Americans is considered completely unusual in other countries.
Name The Price
"Not including tax on prices displayed in stores."
– rubs_tshirts
Always On-The-Go
"Drive thru atms and everything else."
"I didn't learn we had drive thru liquor stores until later in my life."
– cbeiser
Side Effects May Include Feeling Jaded
"Prescription drug commercials."
– Dhk3rd
"Me and my husband love watching the American feed of NFL. We quite like the drug ads, as they have to list all the side effects and it sound like every drug will kill you. We love laughing at the ads."
– toonlass91
Tipping has always been a practice I never understood.
In many other countries, it is not customary to tip because–from what I understand–service industry employees are already incentivized to work hard and provide excellent service because they are already more than reasonably compensated.
Depending on the situation, I think tipping is a flawed system that doesn't work fairly for the consumer and the employee as it can breed resentment.
But that's just my two cents -- which for the record is NOT an appropriate tip. The figure you're looking for is 20%.
Not to be confused with the American Black Dahlia.
Part Chinese.
The famous Black Dahlia Chinese case. A woman had gotten into a argument with her roommate. She said she would be back soon and wanted to go for a walk. She never came back. After several days an elderly poor Chinese woman sees a bag of what appears to be meat and thinks it's leftover meat from a store. She takes it however she notices a arm in the bag.
It was found out it was the missing woman. She had been cut to 1,000 pieces. Some body parts were partially cooked over several days. There's a graphic photo you can see where police pieces the cut up pieces together to make one big image of her. It's gruesome.
It's been 20 years and no one found her killer. Her sister is trying to find justice for her sister who was the first in the family to be in college.
Blame the animals.
GiphyIn my country, more specifically Alaska, there is a long unsolved mystery of "sh*t snowmen" popping up in people's yards.
In uncorrelated areas, someone is breaking open septic tanks, grabbing masses of the frozen poopies, and creating apparently otherwise very well made snowmen.
Spooky.
On June 5 1960 two 15yo girls and an 18yo man were killed by stabbing and blunt strikes to their heads while sleeping inside a tent. Another 18yo young man, Nils Gustafsson, survived with bad stabbing injuries.
The murder weapons have never been found, but Gustafsson's shoes were found partially hidden in a hole between rocks approx. 1/2 km away from the murder site.
On the murder night two unknown men were fishing at the shore. They never reported themselves to the police and even left the fish they caught on the shore.
Modern DNA analysis revealed years later that Gustafsson's shoes had each victim's blood on them, and he was arrested in 2004. The case was declared closed by the National Bureau of Investigation in early 2005 and the trial started later that year, but in the end he was acquitted of all charges.
That's insane.
47 students went missing during a protest. It's kind of obvious the government did it but the bodies haven't been found nor we know exactly what happened.
What country is this?
Mexico.
Aliens in India.
GiphyI grew up in America my whole life but my Indian immigrant mother told me a story of how she heard how there are Alien Rock Paintings in Charama. Apparently, the nearby villages have stories of how 'Rohela' people would come and kidnap people, they came from small flying discs and would land from the sky. NASA's even been involved in helping figure this out.
Another one, again from India told by my dad, is the Nine Unknown Men, who are basically India's version of the Illuminati!
Woah.
In 1966, two men were found dead in Niterói (Brazil). The bodies were found with no sign of violence and were laid down side by side in a "bed" made from palm tree leaves with their backs facing the ground. The bodies were wearing clean suits and raincoats and were already in decomposition. Next to the bodies there were a strange concrete mark, a bottle of magnesium enriched water, a sheet of laminated paper, a package of paper with basic electronic equations and a strange paper saying:
4:30 PM – be in the determined place. 6:30 PM – ingest capsules after the effect,
protect metals and wait for the mask signal*.*
The autopsy of the bodies did not reveal the "causa-mortis", there were no signs of violence, poisoning, organic disturbances and total lack of radioactive contamination, several toxicological exams were conducted, but all the results were negative. The two men, identified as Miguel José Viana, 34, and Manoel Pereira da Cruz, 32, lived in Campo de Goitacazes, and were business partners and radio technicians.
How awful.
The 1970 WVU Coed murders. That write up is really good, you should read it.
TL;DR
Two WVU students, Mared Malarik and Karen Ferrell, are last seen exiting a theater on January 18th, 1970. They get into a cream colored Chevy and go missing. April 6th, 1970, the police get a letter with the supposed exact location of the two girl's remains. More letters come later. April 17th, 1970, the headless bodies are found in a tomb made from river stones and tree branches.
Police discover a local cult wrote the letters after consulting the spirit of a dead doctor. The cult is cleared of involvement.
Pedophile Eugene Paul Clawson confessed to raping and murdering the students, but later rescinded. His claims seem shaky due to, at the time, untreated Klinefelter syndrome, the apparent lack of sexual assault, and other evidence not matching Clawson's claims.
Interesting.
GiphyUnited States. Worked very close to the area this occurred, albeit about 7 years after the initial occurrence:
The case of Ricky McCormick. In June 30th, 1999, the dead body of 41 year old Ricky McCormick was discovered in a notorious "body dumping" area near St. Louis, Missouri. He was unusually (for him) far from where he had last been seen, and the state of decomposition did not coincide with the time frame of the last sighting of him alive (decomposition was more advanced than it should have been).
The strangest part, though, were there bizarre ciphers found on his person. To this day, they have not been decoded, and the chance that this individual, who could barely write his own name, had created a sophisticated cipher such as this was completely dumbfounding.
More detailed information on this unsolved case, and the complexity of the cipher, released by the FBI 12 years after his death, can be found here.
How gruesome.
The Hinterkaifeck murders.
A family of five and their maid were brutally killed with a pickaxe inside their home on a farm in rural Germany. It's been nearly a century and nobody knows who did it. A series of odd events led up to the murders too: The father had reported his keys missing, he found a newspaper inside the house that nobody had bought, a former maid quit working for the family after she had heard unexplainable noise at night. Footsteps appeared in the snow leading towards the house, but not away from it, leading some investigators to conclude that the killer might have hidden inside the house and lived alongside the family for a while.
A detail I've always found particularly gruesome: The youngest victim, Cäzilia (aged 7), was found with clumps of her own hair in her hands. She had torn her hair out terrified as she lay dying next to the corpses of her mother and grandparents.
This is fascinating.
The Roanoke colony disappearance.
During the early colonial days of the US, a small colony was made in North Carolina. It's name was Roanoke. Colonial Life wasn't easy by any means, but Roanoke had it especially rough. They had extremely poor relations with the native tribes in the area and there was some trouble in growing and gathering food. So they had to be resupplied by ship. The captain of that ship Simon Fernandes returned to England to get them more supplies.
However he was delayed 2 year's by the Anglo-Spanish war (England was fond of war during this time). When returning he found the colony abandoned. All 121 (approximately) people were gone. No graves, no bones, and no corpses to be found at all. It was like the people evaporated. The only evidence as to what happened was the word "CROATOAN" carved into a tree. While that was the name of a nearby island, there was nothing found there either.
While it's believed the colonists assimilated into the native tribes for survival, there is no evidence of anything. Not even modern archeological techniques have uncovered any evidence as to what happened.