My favorite part of traveling is getting to know the country.
It feels like every place has its own little idiosyncracies.
Did you know that every outlet in the UK has a tiny little switch next to it to turn it off? Or that you put in your order in a vending machine in Japanese restaurants? Or that the Spanish workday runs from 9-2 and 4-8, so you can get a long lunch or a nap in.
Some of these are the result of long-running historical processes; others are just because someone made a perfectly valid choice out of a bunch of perfectly valid choices, and they've just been doing it that way since.
What I find interesting is when I have so internalized my culture's choices, that I've never bothered to wonder if things could be done a different, better, way.
Like seriously, everyone knows that tipping and healthcare in the US is dumb, but why is nobody complaining about how you can stick a fork into an outlet and electrocute yourself, or how inefficient it is that you have to make aggressive but silent eye contact to get a server over in a restaurant, instead of just yelling "すみません" a la Japan.
To be honest, even the idiosyncracies that are the result of some historical context are fascinating. I never thought about how I always pass people on the right on sidewalks, because America is a right hand drive nation. I never thought about how American convenience stores have to be shit, and how churches became community centers, and why passenger Amtrak is barely a thing. (Blame franchising, religiously homogenous settler culture, and the lobbying efforts of commercial rail.
But lots of things still mystify me.
Like why are our sewer covers circles but our electricity and basement panels square? Why have we decided soap, paper towels, and TP are publically available goods, but not mouthwash, lotion, or pads? Why we name our roads instead of our blocks?
Please share your observations about what we take for granted! Maybe we'll learn something about our world along the way.