You learn something about every country you visit, sometimes big and sometimes small.
Below are the most astounding things people have learned about different countries. Check them out!
1. It’s illegal to own only one Guinea Pig in Switzerland because Guinea Pigs are prone to loneliness.
montadawa
2. My political science professor, a German, says he remembers the first time he heard the phrase “Hospital Bill.”
He thought it was a joke. Why would a hospital ever send you a bill?
Gedanke
3. Literally today, I learned that the UK has a TV channel called Dave. And another one called Dave Ja Vu.
rainingnovember
4. That America doesn’t have wild hedgehogs.
Neither does Australia but I find that less surprising.
Montification
5. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany.
liarandathief
6. That till the other day, gay marriage wasn’t legal in Germany. Never could get my head around it.
TwistTurtle
7. The highest portion of Japanese people living outside of Japan is in Brazil.
hanadita
This article continues on the next page!
8. Americans don’t pull crackers at Christmas time.
That sentence has probably left a lot of Americans confused.
Tang_Fan
9. The amount of people that try to run in front of other cars for insurance claims.
plax1780
10. I’m surprised at how terrible the American health care system really is. The other day I found out you have to pay for ambulances in the US, was completely mindblown.
MacabreMiasma
11. El Salvador is named after Jesus Christ.
CrazyOtto87
12. In South Korea, they have a superstition that fans can cause people to die in the night by stealing the oxygen from the room (unopened with no windows). It’s known as fan death. That’s why most fans made in Korea will have functions to automatically turn of when people are sleeping.
DanBezbik
13. I got to spend one Christmas in a little town in the Netherlands, and I had noticed that there were a number of manholes on the sidewalk, mostly on street corners. Come a day or so before Christmas, the manhole covers were removed to reveal plots of dirt where pine trees were planted and decorated.
Real, living Christmas trees on every street, it was magical and I miss it dearly.
BattleStag17
This article continues on the next page!
14. The New Zealand Air Forces’ emblem is a flightless bird.
eglizan
15. There’s no legal drinking age in Vietnam.
Pieecake
16. Australia is 31 times bigger than the UK. But the U.K has a population around three times the size of Australia.
FakeMexicanGuy
17. Ethiopia follows a calendar that is 7 years behind the rest of the world.
mirkisa22
18. I was pretty surprised to learn about those gigantic, god-awful hornets in Japan.
TotallyNotInebriated
19. Two showers a day isn’t as popular around the world as it is in Brazil.
shanego
20. Liechtenstein is the world’s largest producer of false teeth.
laidnew
21. Italy is the world’s second largest producer of kiwi fruit.
spriteburn
This article continues on the next page!
22. The name Pakistan is actually an acronym denoting the different regions of the country, specifically Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Indus, Sind, and Baluchistan for the -tan ending.
saleemomary
23. Budapest is actually two cities named Buda and Pest on 2 sides of a river.
NTDinh
24. That you can buy coca (i.e., unprocessed cocaine) packaged as tea leaves in the public markets in Ecuador.
That, and most places you can’t flush toilet paper.
kolombi
25. In Bhutan, a lot of the buildings have penises on them for the purpose of protecting the building from bad spirits.
FknNootNoot
26. The Czech Republic consumes the most beer per capita compared to any other country.
juiceboxheero
27. I don’t know why, but for some reason I used to think that kangaroos were an endangered species. Then a friend of mine spent a year studying in Australia, apparently they’re actually everywhere. And they’re like deer in North America in the sense that they will jump in front of moving cars.
sd51223
This article continues on the next page!
28. There is no army in Costa Rica.
i_luke_tirtles
29. During WW2, Switzerland was capable of mobilizing more than 900k soldiers within 24 hours.
To put this into perspective, we’re talking of a country of 4 million at the time.
ecepis
30. In Taiwan, garbage trucks play music. It was cool for the first three months.
0cool_1
31. The USA doesn’t use the word “fortnight” or the word “motorbike”, doesn’t generally have kettles, and their bicycles have the right brake lever linked to the rear brake instead of the front brake.
CuthbertTheDestroyer
32. Russia is really into tea. Like almost UK levels of tea consumption.
DaxLonghorn
34. That in Europe the bathroom stalls have real doors. (Alright, it’s a continent, so sue me!)
FrumWug
35. In Paraguay, almost everyone is bilingual in Spanish and Guarani, which is a Native American language. It’s the only country in the world where the majority of people speak a Native American language.
mouam
This article continues on the next page!
36. I’m a Brit, and like a lot of us, was really surprised that electric kettles aren’t common in America.
I know they don’t drink tea as much, although kettles are for a lot more than just tea (boiling water for cooking or cleaning are big uses), so I assumed they’d be common across at least the Western world.
I view kettles roughly like microwaves, a handy appliance you’d just expect to be there. Another big one about America was that taxes aren’t included in prices. I’d never even heard of this until I went there and genuinely thought they were trying to scam me!
HouseDownTheStreet
37. That the Netherlands was under Spanish control.
ben1204
38. In the 90’s a friend of mine visited Cuba just to have an adventure. He was so surprised whenever he was driving and would stop at a stop sign or red light and total strangers would open the passenger doors and just jump in and go along for the ride. Everyone was so friendly and hospitable and the next thing he knew he was invited to meet every passenger’s whole family and share meals with all of them. This happened quite often and he met more people in 2 weeks than he had after living in San Francisco for 2 years.
ROSERSTEP