They created a department named after a meme coin.
Hate to tell ya, but corporations have been running the US government for most of its existence.
The scariest part about Trump is that the plutocracy no longer need to even hide the vacuous corruption. So many people are so mentally ill they'll literally defend satan to your face, while feeding you an alternate version of reality, citing some dead shit crackpot with 1k YouTube views as "evidence", while calling you crazy. Having dealt with these people, their OS is simply corrupted. They don't know what logic or reality is anymore, and most of them never will... If they can ignore all evidence thus far, they're more likely to murder you than they are to self reflect.
Tourists walking though a farmer's tulip field, trampling the flowers, just to take a stupid picture. Not just one, but dozens of tourists per day.
I'm guessing, Chinese tourists in Holland...
Yes
We get that in Provence with lavender fields, people pick them like it's not the farmers' livelihood
Somebody once hoisted her skirt up, dropped a diarrhea on the wall in a cave, and continued on with her day as if she hadn't just committed a speleological war crime.
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.
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.
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).
Usually French tourists are among the worst behaved, so that's kinda weird
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.
And that's why foreign tourists are no longer allowed on certain streets there. They ruin it for everyone.
Even the characters at Disneyland have specific meet and greet areas where you're supposed to take photos.
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.
Vote to leave Europe and then complain that you lost all benefits living in Benidorm
Brits in Spain are a 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.
Vote to leave the EU
FTFY.
The UK is still in Europe
Only because they couldn't figure out how to leave
Go hiking in insane heat with just a little water bottle. You're going to die in an area with no cell phone service and it's going to suck the entire time.
even more, will call emergencies and search & rescue services who will fly helicopters to the back of the mountain to pull out a dumbass wearing flipflops.
in our country it's not yet charged but in such idiot cases, it should be.
Was in a brewery in South Carolina, tourist asks the bartender for a bud light. Bartender politely explains that it's a brewery, make their own beer, and directs him to a beer menu. Tourist says, "just give me whatever is closest to a bud light." Absolute monster.
I used to work for a large craft brewery. We'd have the same sentiments sometimes.
Someone was furious we wouldn't sell them a keg of Miller. Homie, I don't know how to explain this better, but we only sell the beer we make and that ain't it
Kegs aren't even hard to get. If he really wants that keg he can just call the nearest distributor and they'll be happy to hook him up. They might even deliver it.
This is alcoholic behavior. The alcoholics I know that drink beer (vs wine or whatever) absolutely drink only light beer by the gallon and will order it wherever they are.
If I didn't like beer, didn't know it care about meet, but felt I needed to drink it socially to "be a man", that's exactly how I'd approach the problem.
In a pretty rough pub in Edinburgh, watched a yank order a pint of ale, take one sip and walk back to the bar to ask for a refund cos he didn't like it
Fuck me mate you'll be lucky not to end up wearing it
What the actual fuck
Even in the USA that’s weird behavior
In the us you can ask for a taste and they'll pour a splash. That's ok.
Order the pint, only refund should be if it's off or something
Back when I lived in North Edinburgh someone got shot at my local (Jock's Lodge). They keep changing the name to try to distract from that colourful incident but all the locals stick to the original name. Nice place; friendly bar staff!
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.
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.
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.
Gondola yes
*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.
American lady absolutely losing it and hysterically screaming at a McDonald's cashier for not accepting US dollars. In Ireland.
hysterically
Hey...
Hersterically?
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 [typo edit: 182 lol] and almost 130 kgs [edit for my fellow Americans: that's about one refrigerator in height and around weight of a Shetland pony]). 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.
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.
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.
;-)
I mean in fairness that's still a big motherfucker, just in a different dimension
Haha, missed it. Fixed. Lol.
Yes, kids get changed in their strollers all the time.
A big group of Chinese tourists wanted to be first on a boat for some reason so they all just started shoving everyone out of the way, including little old ladies and children. It was really shocking behavior, like suddenly everyone around them was no longer a person. The boat was huge and had plenty of room for everyone so it wasn't really obvious why they decided to attack people, they didn't really gain anything by being the first aboard.
Shoving is pretty normal in mainland China. It's just how you get through crowds. I've heard it's getting better.
Was it Niagara Falls? Seen Asians do this before for the maid of the myst but not sure what nationality they were. Always assumed it was some Asian version of a college or school frat.
Nope, happened in Paris getting on one of the big tour boats that cruise the Seine. I think it was a large extended family or possibly a tour group composed of multiple families, the youngest were preteens and the oldest were maybe 50s or early 60s. I couldn't figure out if there was a tour guide or anyone in charge of the group. We stayed as far from them as we could, they seemed like a bunch of rich assholes and were mostly loud and obnoxious the entire cruise. And just to make it clear, I've seen a lot of shit behavior from tourists in my life and no ethnicity or nationality has a monopoly on shitty tourists. People are monsters, and rich assholes are gonna rich asshole. This one just stands out as the worst because it was such a large group and the violence was so sudden and pointless, and then we were trapped on a boat ride with them.
I went snorkeling in a group alongside a Chinese tourist family. The dad literally swam over top of me. To be clear, I was floating on the surface. Instead of going around me, he just swam over me, legs kicking and all. Fucking weirdest experience ever.
For some reason I find that hilarious I would've been so shocked I wouldn't have reacted.
I've heard this is common
Vandalize government property and smear human feces on walls, while legislators are having a meeting doing official government duties
wait a minute, those didn't seem like tourists...
Not tourists, terrorists.
They at least acknowledge it
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.
They're so cute though!
But they look so friendly.
[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.
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.
I was in the Navy and one of my shipmates got so drunk he passed out on a bench in front of the fountain at the Kings Cross intersection in Sydney. So a prostitute told him he was going to get arrested and when he spoke she realized he was American and somehow one thing leading to the other....
She gave him a bj at 7am during the beginning of rush hour traffic. She later took us to a couple private bars that were creepy and she stole his Levi's later after they had sex and she left
Yep lived there! This was pre-2010, to be certain. Now there’s a safe injecting site, lockout laws, and other things that make the neighborhood less fun
This was probably 1994/95
Safe consumption sites save lives and improve communities, blatantly so when compared to the status quo. Fuck outta here with that tired, bloodsoaked, right-wing, reactionary NIMBYism.
You dont care and that dehumanization is why you'll catch an ez block; I'm not rehashing this debate for the nth time.
To those reading on or willing to learn more:
Https://crackdownpod.com Actually hear the perspectives from survivors of the War on People [mostly of color] who use Drugs
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dg8DA1LuZFk 5 minutes on why Harm Reduction/Safe Consumption Centers are a better way
I stayed there in 2011 and the hotel didn't have wifi. Jet lag led me to sitting on the sidewalk outside McDonald's at 5am to get some internet.
Haggle and argue with a street vendor in a 3rd world country. He might've been mildly overcharged but the kind of amount that even I let go as a local.
Plus since there's basically 0 tourism here many just like to give away stuff for free to em.
Many also treat the tourist as a tourist attraction lol. Staring and awkwardly asking for photos and what not.
A lot of articles aimed at tourists stress that you should never accept the initial price and always haggle, so I can see how that would happen.
In fact, many of them say that haggling is a sign of respect and an important social norm in some cultures.
Many also treat the tourist as a tourist attraction lol
Ha ha yes, a friend visiting China was handed a baby by its mother, who proceeded to take a photo. Then took the baby back and walked away, without a please or thank you.
Weeeell, tourists are often seen as easy money even in rich countries. There are tourist traps all over and when you don't speak the language or don't know the place, it's very easy to get ripped off. Plus, if you grew up in a place with markets, it's quite normal to haggle - some people go to the market just to haggle because it's fun.
some people go to the market just to haggle because it's fun
This sounds like an actual nightmare
Try to touch a baby Canadian goose with the parent geese near by. WTF was that lady thinking!?!
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.
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.
That's one way to get up close and personal with a cobra chicken
this.
tl;dr: showed up to hotel a day before their room was ready, wanted to sleep in the lobby, got abusive and violent with the staff when they refused, then accused the police of assault when they were forcibly escorted out after refusing for hours to leave.
this got attention in swedish media first, and only got a response from the ccp after it had gone viral.
After reviewing the footage, the Chinese Embassy in Stockholm wrote in a statement that the incident “severely endangered the life and violated the basic human rights of the Chinese citizens.”
That’s rich, coming from officials of a country that runs concentration camps.
'then accused the police of assault' ah, so not an American story then. "Yeah we did it, and we'll do it again!"
yeah watching the video the police are so uncomfortable with having to handle them. the guy basically goes limp in their arms and starts screaming, so another policeman has to grab his feet and they carry him out like ewoks while he screams "THIS IS KILLING".
very strange.
A British tourist riding on the worst metro line left her (expensive) phone on the seat and went behind the seat to look at the metro map. Even stayed there while the doors were open and at least me and three more people could have easily snatched it and left. I don't think the subway in the UK is much better so not sure what she was thinking.
I was on a train in sweden, and at a stop this guy just went and forgot his phone (no backpack or any kind of things left, just his phone), I tried to hail him but that didn't work, so I took the phone and raced after him, giving it to him outside the train.
He was talking to someone and was clearly not happy about it all.
Well well, I boarded the train and thought I had at least done a good deed.
Guy comes aboard and rides the train to the next station...
Hey maybe he learned not to leave his things like that and it was a good deed in the end
The only place where I'd do this would be in one of those Islamic countries where they cut your hand off for stealing
You could probably get away with it in Japan or Korea, too. In Japan, they'd be glaring at you for saving your seat, and in Korea, an old person might sit on your phone or yell at you...but the phone would still be there
Cursed but probably rational.
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.
We hosted some Japanese tourists a few times when I was younger.
My mom and dad got pretty freaked out when they caught one of the older women (young adult age, from what I remember) going into my brother’s room (~age 7-9) and sitting on his bed and looking at him as he slept. I don’t think she actually did anything but it was super creepy. They ended up kicking her out.
Another one at another time got really upset at us and ended up leaving. I don’t remember specifics, I just remember her screaming at my parents and then leaving. I was pretty young when this happened. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because we lived close to a big US city at the time but not within walking distance. But looking at a map might give you that impression and she may have thought she’d get to do more in that city when she couldn’t.
We hosted quite a few groups and most seemed to enjoy their stay and have a fun time. I remember my brother and I getting quite a few gifts from them, small stuff like toys and treats, and getting to hear a bit about Japan.
Overdose on heroin in a country that didn't really have any emergency services.
One imagines the middle of the Venn diagram between people with international tourism money and people who overdose on heroin is pretty slim.
Heroin is not unpopular among celebrity drug deaths.
Shit on the sidewalk.
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!
The seals don't bite the zonies? I don't go near the seals or sea lions because I assume they will bite. They look too much like sea doggos, and domesticated doggos will still bite strangers.
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.
A family was trying to have a 3-day-old baguette and breaking their teeth on it
Not the craziest thing in this thread but inside a train, arguing loudly on the phone.
It sounded like the tourist was scammed or something.
Voluntarily go to Berlin
Nie wieder Berlin!
Now that is terminally stpid, Inders.
Never had the chance to go out of the US, what's wrong with Berlin? Seems like an orderly and we'll run place from this side of the pond
I was in the line to get tickets for Leeds Castle in UK. Some guy got off a bus ran past the line to the ticket guy. He started slamming his hands down and yelling "Fish and Chips" over and over again.
The ticket guy wasn't selling any food and wasn't going to sell him a ticket unless he got in line. After about 2 minutes of this he just got back on the bus.
Influencer?
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 ;)
Hide an STI
Out fishing with some buddies on a river popular for its springs and people floating on inner tubes.
Except, we were well south of the exit for tubers to be picked up by the shuttle and taken back to the start, and we start hearing a loud group approaching. Eventually they saw us and loudly spoke to each other saying something about "asking the rednecks". When they got closer they did, to the point of saying, "Hey rednecks, where is the exit for tubers? Did we pass it or is it coming up?"
They were probably a 20 minute float past the exit. I told them they had about another 20 minutes to go.
"Thank you rednecks!"
Attempt to hitchhike across the US. No clue if they made it, but I carried them through Kentucky.
I say this as someone who has successfully hitchhiked the length and breadth of the 48 states, but these folks were not prepared for what they were attempting.
I once saw a lady pick up her toddler, help him stand on a trashcan, and piss into it.
