NationStates Jolt Archive

When I travel, I always cherish those moments that make me realize that I am far from home, far from my norm. This can be local or international, I'm talking about the experience that gives you 'goose pimples', 'hair up on your neck' or especially a 'sense of wonder'. I'm asking for a single travel event that really stopped you in your tracks. Perhaps, this is as simple as seeing a palm tree or snow for the first time. Or the juxtaposition of normal things out of context. Often, it is the interaction of people.
I'll give 3 quick examples:
1)Being awaken in Jerusalem by the Muslim call to prayer, followed by the people going to synagogue (sic?), finally by the Christian bells. Perhaps, not in that order -but, the experience of being awoken by 3 religions in a row!
2)On the second day of a High mountain hike in the Rockies of Montana,USA...to find a rusted out Ford Model-T. No roads forever!?
3)Trying to photograph the cathedral in Koln, Germany. I kept going back to get it's SIZE. When I took the shot, I looked down & saw a giant, bronze * underneath in English it said, "Something historic might have happened here."

How about you? Give me one short travel 'surreal' moment...

eating boiled hamburgers

watching french people dance

Ya, there are a lot of local surreal events. A king of weird is the USA's "Burning Man" festival.

I'm a thinking of fish on crutches trying to grab hooks...but what I really wanted to say is that my typing sucks, if it takes a while -stare at the flying monkeys.

When on a school trip to Holland in primary 6 our group was wandering past some beer gardens when all of a sudden we heard a loud cheer from the table we were passing, then a small object spun of the table and landed infront of the young female teacher who was with us. The object - from the perspective of a naivie 10 year old - could only be described as a small 'wind-up willey'. The teachers response was to move the group along quickly saying 'Er, people here are different from people back home' in an attempt to explain what just happened. :D

Surreal home moment.

When I was little I asked during dinner:
"What's masturabting?"
"That's Belgian dear"
"Okay"

I have a bunch, Sitting on my balcony @ the pyramids hotel gazing at the lightshow on the side of the great pyramids. Getting an old michael jackson poster as a gift from a syrian girl i met there. Being hustled into the shops @ Sharm El Shiek by insane shop keepers. The beautiful ladies of Israel, as soon as I stepped out of the car a georgous (female) soldier ran up and gave me a kiss. Really hot israeli soldiers in bikinis with m16 rifles walking down the beach. Going to Dominican Republic for my honeymoon, absolutely noone spoke any english. They had this crazy troop of entertainers that called themselves the chocolate friends, they were constantly trying to get us to do some kind of activity. On my cruise a couple months ago there was this complete redneck, who was smashed and he just kept bothering this black family by telling them how he has black friends and loves black people. It really cracked me up. I paid 350$ for some laser to whiten my teeth while my wife got her facial there and it gave me a big blister on my lip. Very expensive blister. My wife and I decided to take a bicycle tour of Beliz, BIG mistake. While it was fun for me, the ride was 5 miles through dense jungle, had to stop periodically to hack jungle with a machete and my wife flipped over the handle bars more than once. It ended up cool though at some ancient mayan ruins. OKOK I have many more and could elaborate much more and be more cohesive but sorry no time.

Surreal home moment.

When I was little I asked during dinner:
"What's masturabting?"
"That's Belgian dear"
"Okay"

That's a brilliant reply! Think about what awkward question couldn't be answered by that? 'Mummy what are those two dogs doing?' :D

Nothing like reaching for the "C" faucet in the shower when you are in a Spanish speaking country...not 'cold' but 'caliente'. Damn, I about boiled myself. Not home, not norm...just red faced. :eek:

I was in Russian Orthadox bush Alaska, USA. An old man was celerbrating a traditional birthday with a potlatch. Anyhow, a good portion of the food was seal meat-seal oil...which might preserve your heart, BUT IS THE VILEST food on earth (to my knowledge). I went down the line & stocked up on caribou which is very good. Unfortunately, cooked in SEAL OIL! I knew I was a long way from home when I had to gag that down & look grateful for being invited.

Went to Norway for two weeks in the middle of winter skiing, and stayed just south of the arctic, but on the north side of a mountain in a long valley. Didn't see the sun for the enitre time i was there until i left to travel to the airport. But as I came round the valley and the sun flooded into the bus i was on, it was just the wierdest feeling that the one of the things you take for granted you could miss so much.

I was in Russian Orthadox bush Alaska, USA. An old man was celerbrating a traditional birthday with a potlatch. Anyhow, a good portion of the food was seal meat-seal oil...which might preserve your heart, BUT IS THE VILEST food on earth (to my knowledge). I went down the line & stocked up on caribou which is very good. Unfortunately, cooked in SEAL OIL! I knew I was a long way from home when I had to gag that down & look grateful for being invited.

Gold Coast. Christmas dinner on a beach in 40C (110F) heat.
Aussie xmas is weird.

Praha. Accidentallty breaking the frying pan a nice Czech girl has lent us by playing tennis with it. Struggling to cook food all week.

Yarmouth. Went for a weeks holiday on a whim. Found out the hostel was full, spent 2 hours walking round trying to find somewhere we could afford that would take us. Shopping for a weeks food and spending £3.50 per person.

Langkawi Being assaulted from all sides with water while driving thru the town during songkran (Thai new year/water festival)

Some fun memories :)

I was sick one day. I took a pill.

Several hours later I had to puke and when I opened my eyes again there was the pill, whole and amidst my dinner and lunch

Walking out of the train station and looking up from my map, after a 3 Hour flight followed by a 4 hour train journey to suddenly be confronted by a large Beautiful fullmoon, just above the waters of the beautiful city of Venice.
I immediatly reacted by suddnly stopping in my tracks & immdiatly replying to the scene with a "Wooow!" & stood there inanimate for a good few seconds.

"Surreal travel moments... "

The very first time I knew someone was shooting at me, not just throwing rounds out to see if they could hit someone, but aiming specifically at me! I remember thinking, "Son, you a LONG way from home!" :)

"Surreal travel moments... "

The very first time I knew someone was shooting at me, not just throwing rounds out to see if they could hit someone, but aiming specifically at me! I remember thinking, "Son, you a LONG way from home!" :)

Wasn't the reason why they did so well because they were close to home and knew how to best exploit the conditions? (at least to my limited knowledge of a subject you doubtlessly know an infinate more about than I do.)

I was sick one day. I took a pill.

Several hours later I had to puke and when I opened my eyes again there was the pill, whole and amidst my dinner and lunch
That reminds me of something...
I was a littke sick to my stomache, and my dad gave me some hebal pill. I took it, and got so sick that I had ot stay home for two days. Ahh, such effective medicine.

I haven't traveled much, just the US and northern Mexico, but I remember a story my uncle told me. He was a life guard on the Black Sea. They all got drunk one night and passed out in their tents. Uncle Gert fell asleep with his feet sticking out the tent flap. He woke up to a camel eating his sandal. A circus was traveling through and they had stopped to rest the animals.

Having a female Stag beetle shoot some kind of repellant in my eye because a retarded guy kept hitting it with a stick.

3)Trying to photograph the cathedral in Koln, Germany. I kept going back to get it's SIZE.

Thats a good one. To this day I have two pictures of the thing. One of the top half and one of the bottom. My defining travel moment would have to be going to my first coffee shop in Amsterdam and the following hour or so. Either that or a 3 hour train ride between Klagenfurt and Salzburg where I wasn't sure if the guy across from me was going to stab me or kiss me.

Wasn't the reason why they did so well because they were close to home and knew how to best exploit the conditions? (at least to my limited knowledge of a subject you doubtlessly know an infinate more about than I do.)

Well, they missed. :D

My most surreal travel moment...

I was on a ski trip with my school, we were driving through Austria. Along the way we ended up on a mountain road overlooking a city we'd passed through earlier.

I looked down for a bit, got bored, turned, and saw something I missed from ground level.

A ski jump over the city. I mean if you got on the thing and jumped, you'd be flying straight into the city.

I spent the rest of the day going "WTF?" in my head.

strangest thing ive ever seen is in Buenos Aires...

some 70+ year old women in fish nets and a corset dancing to an old guy with an ancient acousit guitar...strange indeed

another surreal thing was in Budapest airport. Or to be more precise, in the car park of the airport. Amid all these crappy Dacia's and cars like that - and general poverty - was a gleaming, brand new, Mercedes - Benz SL55 AMG....obscene

Some years back I was a delivery driver. I'd made my delivery and was on the highway headed back. Traffic was light, but suddenly the car directly in front of me swerved to one side, then I found myself driving through thousands of bouncing crystals. My foot came off the gas as I looked ahead, the small buss that was in front of the car that swerved was pulling to the side of the highway. I realized what the 'crystals' I drove through were, they were what remained of the emergency exit rear window of the buss. This was apparent because of the guy hanging out of the back of the buss waving his hands in the air. As the buss pulled over he started climbing out and dropped to the ground before it stopped. I had slowed considerably watching all this and he dashed across the highway in front of me. I watched him climb the center divider run across the opposite traffic lanes and disappear down the embankment on the other side. I turned back to the buss as I passed it and saw the name of a mental health institute on the side of it.

I was only about 200 miles from home but the one thing that popped into my head was "You ain't in Kansas anymore"

Well, they missed. :D

Always nice :)

The French blowing up a bag on Lingerie at Nice airport because they thought it was a bomb :rolleyes:. Very funny to look back over the railings and see a load of pants dangling over the stairs.

1.My family and I were driving to California when i was 14 and we kept waving at people as they drove by and they waved back. Eventually one guy blew us a kiss and another guy showed us his false teeth.

2.Getting caught in a downpour in NYC while walking through the financial district with my friend Helen. We were on our way to Ground Zero, we actually stopped at the side of a building so she could take a picture of the Chrysler Building, her favorite.

3.Watching monkeys just snatch food out of our hands at the game farm outside of Vancouver.

4.A drunk guy and his friend being let on the Greyhound in a tiny town in Ontario. People constantly had to tell him to be quiet because he was disturbing everyone. The guys in the seat ahead of me were sharing their sunflower seeds with him.

5.Getting stuck in Jasper overnight on the train when my family and i were on our way to Edmonton, i was 12. Our parents actually said that we would go back home if the train didn't get going soon. We fell asleep not knowing if we would end up in Edmonton or not. The train got going again though sometime while we were asleep.

Flying to San Jose Del Cabo, going out to Todos Santos to surf, and running into a friend of my family at one of the breaks there - a friend who's last name was the source of my middle name, and who comes from the same small town of about 2500 people where I was raised (in rural BC Canada), and who lived just down the road from me. Ill tell you, we exchanged some weird glances - then we went and got a couple bottles of tequila, got drunk and chased women around Cabo San Lucas for the next two days until I decided to go out and explore the East Cape. Its a small world. ;)

Great idea for a thread!

Some funny times in Oz:

We were staying at a timeshare out in the wops a bit and went out the front door of our cabin to have about seven kangaroo standing there :)

Got bit by a bull ant when I was little. Was out with my grandad on the volunteer fire brigade engine. Hurt like hell!

Got a photo with a 2 metre snake wrapped around my neck!