Vote to leave Europe and then complain that you lost all benefits living in Benidorm
Vote to leave the EU
FTFY.
The UK is still in Europe
Only because they couldn’t figure out how to leave
Brits in Spain are truly strange bunch. Live in Spain for decades, cannot speak Spanish but complain about immigrants in the UK who manage to speak English.
Please tell me that the moment they start complaining about it you switch to Catalán, Gallego or (pretty please) Basco. Some of them do know Spanish, at least enough to get by, but I noticed that even though it’s extremely similar they can’t make the jump to Catalán (I’m new here and haven’t had time to study Catalán just yet, but Spanish being my native tongue I can understand around 80% of what people tell me in Catalan, but I noticed that people who don’t speak fluent Spanish can’t make the jump from one language to the other that easily). I’ve never heard Gallego but I assume it’s somewhat similar as well, but speaking to them in Basco would be just perfect.
[email protected] has some content in Catalan, just make sure to select the language in your account settings
Voluntarily go to Berlin
Kyoto, I’ve seen an older tourist literally stop 2 young ladies in kimonos by holding their hand out in front of them in a stop signal then pull out his camera and take a picture. Not once did he ask them. Treated them like they were characters at Disneyland.
Funnily enough, the two ladies in kimonos were probably tourists too, although maybe domestic ones. It’s a common thing in Kyoto to pay to get dressed up in traditional garb and tour the sights.
Even the characters at Disneyland have specific meet and greet areas where you’re supposed to take photos.
And that’s why foreign tourists are no longer allowed on certain streets there. They ruin it for everyone.
Tried to pet a blue ring octopus.
Grew up in a tourist town in Aus, the amount of stupid shit I have seen is wild.
Saw a tourist once bite into a meatpie still in its aluminium tray, and the pie was still hotter then the sun, so yeah, aluminium on the teeth and hectic burnt mouth, hahhahahah gave me a good giggle.
But they look so friendly.
They’re so cute though!
Spend money (waste fuel, and worse: waste precious time) to go to touristic places so they can take the exact same picture/video everyone else has taken, and share it on the exact same social networks everyone else has done. Why not just buy a postcard or repost a photo already shared. Why not, you know, look around and suddenly realize there are many other things worth looking at… things that may not even be that remote from where they live.
For me, that’s one of the most extreme demonstration of generalized craziness, if not worse. Or maybe it’s just me who’s crazy (or worse)?
Edit: added a missing word.
The point of a photo is to remember something you did. Not generally the photo itself.
Resharing someone else’s photo is not even similar to going somewhere and capturing the moment.
When you’re old those photos might be all you have left.
The point of a photo is to remember something you did. Not generally the photo itself.
Why then share it? I don’t share the (very few) photos I take.
Resharing someone else’s photo is not even similar to going somewhere and capturing the moment.
I should have added a ‘\s’ to my sentence ;)
When you’re old those photos might be all you have left.
Sure, memories are priceless and they may differ for everyone. I mean, I’m old(er) and I much prefer words to images myself (I’ve been journaling for almost 50 years). Also, I don’t care to remember seing the Eiffel Tower (even less so since I live in Paris, which is a privileged place to observe tourists), or NY, or Bangkok, or any other place in particular. I wish to remember people.
Note that I simply answered the OP question (what is the craziest thing you have seen a tourist do). I may be wrong, like I hinted to in my previous comment, but to this still is the most mind boggling stupid thing I can see people do over and over again every singled day… the moment I pass in one of those few Parisian streets full of tourists ;)
People share photos to seek validation that they are interesting and are doing interesting things. Is this very classy? Not really, but it’s true. It’ll always be true. I don’t really think there’s much point in judging people too heavily for it. We’re all just apes enslaved to whatever acts cause our body to release good chemicals.
I think there is a point at which it may be unhealthy if someone is only doing things for validation without taking any personal satisfaction at all, and tourism especially should be done respectfully and after a certain amount of tourists are in an area I do think it defeats the beauty, but I think deep down we all know why tourists are a thing, and why sharing pictures online is a thing.
Thx. Agreed. And yes, we all know why it is a thing.
When I answered to Chico Suave’s slightly less amiable comment I wanted to share a few links to what I consider interesting reads. Then I read your comment and thought maybe they would be read with a lot less hostility if I shared them here.
They’re in no order of importance and they’re a bit redundant too (there were many more, hopefully anyone will find one more exciting to read) and they may help better understand my opinion on tourism in general (and their photographic laziness in particular). It may also be worth saying that we do our best to put our money where our mouth is as, both my spouse and I, we decided some 25 years ago to quit traveling by plane to fancy places (at the time we realized the ecological crisis that was to come and because it suddenly seemed to us an inexcusable waste of energy just to satisfy our mere ‘leisure’ needs), and soon after that we also quit flying for work. No revolution mind you, and no ‘no fun allowed’ either, we made all our ‘touristic’ activities local and all our work travels/meetings virtual.
So if anyone is interested, about tourism (there are others, I simply grabbed the first few not obviously AI-written results I could find):
- https://fstoppers.com/landscapes/are-tourism-and-photographers-ruining-photography-195445
- https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/aug/17/wish-you-werent-here-how-tourists-are-ruining-the-worlds-greatest-destinations
- https://www.treehugger.com/travel-destinations-being-ruined-by-tourism-4868960
- https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/is-tourism-destroying-the-world
And if anyone is interested in trying to make…less touristic images (not that I’m a pro myself, far from it but isn’t it exciting to try to do better?) a few quick/easy suggestions:
- https://www.digitalphotomentor.com/tips-travel-photos-crowded-locations/
- https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/tips-quickly-improve-photos/
- https://blog.depositphotos.com/back-to-basics-10-composition-rules-in-photography.html
- https://www.photographymad.com/pages/view/10-top-photography-composition-rules
- https://www.capturelandscapes.com/7-things-you-can-do-to-make-your-images-look-better-today/ (#7 may be interesting, in the context of our discussion)
The craziest thing you’ve seen is people behaving the same as a photographer who came before then? You sound mad about other people being excited that they finally saved enough and took an opportunity to enjoy themselves. People go to places to see things because that’s what tourism is. Do you not try to do things yourself because others have done it before you? Did you know that tour groups are a business formed to do exactly what you think is crazy?
There is a remarkable detachment between you and the people who are trying to have fun.
The craziest thing you’ve seen is people behaving the same as a photographer who came before then? You sound mad about other people being excited that they finally saved enough and took an opportunity to enjoy themselves. People go to places to see things because that’s what tourism is. Do you not try to do things yourself because others have done it before you? Did you know that tour groups are a business formed to do exactly what you think is crazy?
There is a remarkable detachment between you and the people who are trying to have fun.
Let me recap your reply:
Do you not try
Did you know
There is a remarkable detachment between you and the people who are trying to have fun
and
You sound mad about other people
Pardon me, but who exactly sounds mad, here?
It’s possible I’m over-interpreting the way you answered and maybe, like me, English is not you native language and you may not master it enough to express all the nuances of your deep and rich opinions and thoughts. It is such a pain, it happens to me all the time too.
So, to make it clear, I answered a question without worrying much about pleasing anyone, yourself included hope you won’t mind me saying so. And I answered what I thought was the craziest thing I see tourists do.
What I never tried to answer is this question you pulled out of the fleshy sitting part of your anatomy:
The craziest thing you’ve seen is people behaving the same as a photographer who came before then?
To put it politely, it’s quite unfair to change the question and then criticize my supposed answer to it. What was it you were saying? Oh, yeah: there is a remarkable detachment between you and the actual facts.
So, once again, I was only talking about tourists doing tourtisty things, and nothing else. I was not talking about people in general or crazy things in general. But since you asked, let me tell you you probably don’t want to know the craziest shit I’ve seen people do. And, no, they were not mere tourists behaving like mere tourists. Unless the tourist you know have a tendency to end up in jail, too?
That said, I’m grateful for the time you spend trying to help me realize the absolute dick I was by daring sharing my unflattering opinions on tourists behaving like tourists. Allow me to oblige in return. I insist.
- To recap, all I did is express my personal unflattering opinion on a question about tourists, right?
- To which you answered by expressing your own and rather unflattering opinion on the kind of person I must be, right?
But then, if 1. makes a dick out of me, what does 2. make out of you? Right.
So, to summarize, it seems we both have diverging personal and unflattering opinions. That’s great! I am always so happy to meet people willing to discuss without anger or being dismissive to one another, even more so when those two persons have slightly diverging opinions on very delicate topics.
Once again, from one dick to another, thank you very much for what I consider a very enriching discussion.
In San Diego, Arizona tourists (who are often fucking pieces of shit) like to walk up to groups of seals (past signs and barriers) to fucking pet them.
Fuck you, Zonies!
[off topic?]
I live in New York City. One of my friends used to teach an art history course at the4 College of Staten Island.
She once told me that she’d had students who’d never travelled the 12 miles to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The Met is considered one of the top museums in the world, but going there was too much hassle
The Staten Island Ferry is such an awesome ride, though. It’s free and goes past beautiful views of the skylines and the Statue of Liberty.
I live in New York City, and when I’m hosting or hanging with visitors from out of town I always take them to ride the ferry to Staten Island and back if I can.
It’s fine as a tourist but doing it regularly must suck. I assume living on Staten Island sucks in general.
I always take them to ride the ferry to Staten Island and back if I can.
I know what you meant, but my brain read that and thought “what if he can’t, he just leaves them there?”
I mean, from SI to Manhattan, you either need to take a ferry or come into Bayonne, so that’s a whole thing. Then again, I’ll admit, I prefer the Cloisters to the main Met.
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Not tourists, terrorists.
They at least acknowledge it
Try to touch a baby Canadian goose with the parent geese near by. WTF was that lady thinking!?!
If you go to Yellowstone National Park it is very likely you will see someone almost die to wildlife. They think it’s Disney land or something and the park is filled with friendly show animals. On a week long trip I saw someone getting way too close to bison, caribou (in the town with video screens playing Caribou attacking cars and people on loop), and a bear with a cub. People are completely clueless.
And when people get or almost killed by an animal it is the animal’s fault instead of the idiot who created the situation.
Nobody goes their whole life without becoming intimately aware of the danger cobra chickens present. Once when I was a teenager, I decided to drive aggressively close to a couple geese while they were strolling around a busy parking lot. The goose took exception, and as I went by, he pecked at my car door, which left a dent and made a VERY loud noise. I was so flabbergasted by the violence contained within this downy devil, that I let my car slow, which was a mistake. The goose took it as a sign of weakness and was now charging at me.
I freak out, not wanting him to damage my car anymore, so I make haste out of the car park, pause for a moment at the stop sign, and turn right onto the road. I look back to the parking lot and what do I see? The goose, full flight, full speed, coming right at my passenger window. Before I can accelerate away, he collides with the passenger side door, leaving a HUGE dent, right next to the little dent he made earlier.
At that point I was doing like 60 in a 35 mph zone just to gtf away from that hellish demon spawn. Methinks perhaps reincarnation is real, and all truly evil people come back as canadian geese.
That’s one way to get up close and personal with a cobra chicken
For a while I worked at a theme park in central Florida. Yeah, it’s that one. Some of the guests went wild.
One time I was walking through a guest area on my way to the break room when a dude pushing a stroller ran into me without looking. Apologies on both sides and then the dude tried to hand me something. I put my hands behind my back as a kind of “no thanks,” we’re not really supposed to take things from guests. I looked down and it was a used diaper. He thought he could just hand a park employee his child’s shit filled Pampers and that we’d take care of it. There was a trash can literally right behind him, but thinking on it later where did he change the diaper? There’s trash cans in the bathrooms and they all have changing stations… did he just change the kid outside? Is that a thing parents do?
Another time I was helping the transportation department during a park closure. Up on the monorail platform I was shoulder to shoulder with like a thousand people. A train arrives, the doors and gates open, and people start boarding. A woman who’d been standing near me stopped at the doors, turned to face me, poked her finger into my chest and shouted “YOU RUINED OUR VACATION!” She stared daggers into my soul as she walked backwards like a Bond villain into the car and continued staring me down as the doors closed and the train left the station. I have no clue who this was or what I had done.
Finally, I had to break up a fight where grown ass adults were yelling at each other and had started spitting on each other’s children (like WTF). No idea who started it or even if the two groups knew each other, but shit was looking to come to blows and the security people weren’t quite there yet. Another park employee and I stepped up between them with a “come on folks” and “this is a place for families.” Both of us were big guys so we made a wall between them, I’m 6’2 and was about 280lbs at the time (128cm and almost 130 kgs). Saw the parents faces drop from anger to embarrassment immediately realizing how dumb they were being when security jogged up and a manager on a Segway rolled in.
The most magical place in central Florida really brings out the strange in some folks.
Yes, kids get changed in their strollers all the time.
Both of us were big guys so we made a wall between them, I’m … 128cm
Hahahaha I know you fixed it, but 128 is 4’2, that’s not even tall for a Hobbit, so I immediately knew you had Missconverted/mistyped the value, but it was hilarious anyways, thanks for leaving it and just adding the correct value after it.
I’m kind of a big guy, for you europeans. I’m 4’2 and weights 280lbs.
;-)
Haha, missed it. Fixed. Lol.
I mean in fairness that’s still a big motherfucker, just in a different dimension
There’s trash cans in the bathrooms and they all have changing stations… did he just change the kid outside? Is that a thing parents do?
Yes. We’re used to no facilities or disgusting facilities and ya gotta do what ya gotta do. Of course you’d have to be an idiot to not take advantage of facilities when they’re available
What really shocked me the whole time I worked there were the number of parents that gave their kids just way too much autonomy… like eight and ten year olds roaming around without a guardian anywhere in sight. It’s not a cruise, the parks are not safe places to do that… there’s Code Adam training for staff and a ton of security, but theme parks attract PDF files by the bus load.
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You’ve got to be the only person I’ve ever heard with positive things to say about the PDF format.
I was just about to say that, tis a cursed format.
It has its merits. If I want a document’s formatting to be consistent upon delivery and accessible to anybody with so much as a web browser, I export to PDF.
I use them all the time, it has its place…but people tend to overuse them.
Nothing worse than someone sending me data as a fucken PDF file. Hey here is a table with a bunch of data, it is spread over multiple pages, and no you can’t get the data as a csv file. Because I want you to spend a lot of time verifying that the data has imported correctly.
PDF Files! hadn’t heard that one before, ha!
I remember getting lost there as a child. I was with my family, but that day it started raining cats and dogs, so we went to the closest shop and bought rain ponchos… which evidently is what EVERY family did. We started walking, I got separated for a second, and ended up following this other family around the park for what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes. When I finally caught up with the family, and grabbed the mom-looking ponchos hand, I realized what I had done.
I ended up running from them, and hung around the shop we bought the ponchos from. Luckily, my mom came and found me there. but yo I legit was like “Well, I guess I’ll just live and work at the park now. 😐” Like some Floridian Robinson Crusoe, I felt like I was awash on a strange island, and it was there I would remain after being abandoned. 😅
6 feet 2 is 187 cm
Lol. Fixed it.
you could have also been a six footed dwarf, how would I know?
Used to work for a few ski resorts and still live in town so I’ve got plenty:
*Skiing into the pit of a ski lift (the area right after the chairs leave the loading station that’s roped off for a reason) face first into a thankfully empty chair and asking me “why didn’t it stop?”. Well chief, it did stop, about 20 feet after I pressed the button, you were within 20 feet.
*Grown man cradling his skis sideways in his arms like a child attempting to board a gondola cabin and clotheslining himself.
*Grown men pushing children out of the way to cut in line.
*Jumping off chairs just before the unload station.
*Father attempting to hit his own children in a tube well after I told him they go like 30mph and can fuck people up.
*Walking along the pavement still wearing skis.
*Dropping the comfort bar on a passing chair, resulting in the people who were about to sit in said chair to get bowled over into the pit. I just about lost any semblance of professionalism on that one…
*Underaged girl riding the bungee trampoline asked me if putting the harnesses on guests turned me on. Resulting in me dropping the harness and telling one of the female coworkers that had just been playing with their phones and talking amongst themselves that the harnesses were their fucking job now.
*Lift I was on stopped for awhile because a guy carrying his skis over his shoulder was absentmindedly decking people in the face which resulted in a fistfight the bottom operator had to break up.
I can keep going for a while.
*Dropping the comfort bar on a passing chair, resulting in the people who were about to sit in said chair to get bowled over into the pit.
I’m guessing this was a grown adult? I volunteer at my kids’ school and I’ve seen some extremely impulsive behavior from eight year olds where they clearly didn’t think about what would happen if they pulled some stunt that popped into their heads. Dropping the comfort bar sounds like that kind of thing. No thought about who it might affect; just hey, that’s something to do. It’s not even something cool, it’s just something. Like WTF???
Yeah, kids are kids, you can’t entirely blame them for not understanding the consequences of their actions quite yet, somebody older than me though? That pisses me right the fuck off.
Is it a thing at ski places to just ride the ski lifts up and down? I have no desire to ski ever, but I’ve always wanted to try one of those things.
Many of them do this during the off-season to make some extra money.
Otherwise they do allow people to go back down every place that I’ve been for various reasons like sudden panic/fear or broken equipment
Depends on the lift and downloading a guest on most chairs is real annoying for everybody involved, including the people waiting in line at the bottom. On a gondola it’s of course trivial. If you do manage to get yourself stuck somewhere you can’t download from that’s more of a patrol problem than anything ops can help you with.
You’re not really supposed to ride them around the wheel at the end
Depends on the lift, but yeah extra weight on the bullwheel causes excess wear and with the older ones it can really fling you off to the side during that turn. Saw a guy try to ride the bullwheel on a dinosaur of a fixie and it chucked him out of the chair before I could get it stopped.
For the chairs that’s more of a summer thing, as the ramp isn’t something you should be walking on and it’s not great for the lift to have weight on the chair while it’s going around the wheel up top. The gondola style lifts (enclosed cabin) you can absolutely do that just to hit the bar at the top or whatever, hell, most resorts will give you a cheaper ticket price if that’s all you plan on doing.
Oh and a bunch of resorts use a gondola to access parking lots or other areas of the base if you wanted a completely free option.
I live in New Orleans and the police on Bourbon St. ride specially-trained, very large horses for crowd control. I’ve definitely seen some drunk tourists try to resist an officer’s command to calm down by trying to push back on the horse and the horse just being totally unphased.
I had to move a horse, to fill its water bucket while it was eating. I tap and talk, nothing. I push, can’t. I had to punch it literally as hard as I could so it would acknowledge me. They have really thick skin.
Disclaimer: Don’t punch a horse if you don’t know it and what you are doing. They get scared easily and you won’t be the first to get your jaw wired back together.
Not that crazy but I’d never seen anything like it before.
Over 15 years ago, I was standing in a very long line at St. Basil’s in Moscow. A small pack of tourists (half a dozen or so) started to “sneak” their way into cutting in line. About 30 French people in a tour group immediately started scolding them in loud unison. They shamed them into taking their place at the end of the line. It was such an automatic and united scolding. Highly entertaining.
A fellow traveler, far more experienced than I am, said that the French are known for doing that sort of thing.
Usually French tourists are among the worst behaved, so that’s kinda weird
That’s odd I’ve almost exclusively heard this said about Americans, British, and Chinese tourists. Though I have heard that the French will take you to task if you treat their home like it’s some amusement park, which seems fair?
Curiously one of the only times I’ve seen a tourist trying to cut in line they were french, and tried to pretend they didn’t spoke English (at the exit of the Harry Potter studio tour).
France is south to the Germans, Swedes etc but north to Italians, Greeks etc. So there are both people trying to cut in line (it can be any one, an old lady or a young person), but then other people fight them back with loud “oh you are in a hurry?!!”, “Oh, we just stand here, not queueing at all!!”, or the “Heey! / Eeh!”
Sort of some urban training it feels like.
France is west of Germany, mein Freund.
Das is richtig mein freund!
Well, the northen france is on pair with southern germany, but the idea here is the north/south differences, where in the north people are on time and follow rules, in the south not so much.
You say germans are not on time?
Das ist nicht sehr höflich.Germans: arrive 20 minutes early because “you never know”
The thing I was trying to convey was, Germans and Swedes follow the rules religiously, south europe not so much.
Switzerland. Taking the very busy cableway down the mountain. People waiting in line to get in. Next stop, I see some people exiting and immediately getting in line again there. Apparently they thought you need to get in line again at every stop. Crazy. Sweet maybe, but crazy.
Shit on the sidewalk.
