moving from SA to Europe, I did not expect that I could feel hotter in Europe. I was naively expecting 4 months of snow coverage
You should move to the Nordics, maybe Lappland? :D
Vancouver/Edmonton to Australia (Sydney then southwest Victoria).
It gets properly cold here - it’s not hot an sunny everyday like they advertise to us overseas. Aussies also don’t use insulation in their houses so having to deal with single digit temperatures inside the house makes me die a little everyday.
Dont use insulation??
There are minimum standards…now. That builders and developers were dragged kicking and screaming to (“just throw another reverse cycle aircon on mate, she’ll be right”).
I’ve never lived in an insulated house. I’ve never lived more south than the subtropics and the coldest a house had been inside is 6 degrees C with a floor surface probably lower than that. The people down south have probably suffered more than me in some homes.
I’ve lived in Warrnambool and Ballarat. I can confirm first hand that air temperatures inside the house have reached 4C, and I could see my breath 😭
Yeesh. You win.
What was house constructed from? Outside temp?
I don’t know. It wasn’t a very old house, I think it was built in 2005, and I lived in it from 2022-2025. I just know it was frigid and consistently colder inside than it was outside in winters 🥲
Single digits in Celsius though, right?
Does it even still get to more than -12c/9f in the skiing towns over there?
Yes, Celcius. I haven’t gone to any of the ski fields here, so I actually don’t know. Haven’t been paying attention.
Colder than Edmonton :?
Outdoors, I can deal with the -40C in low humidity no problem. In Australia (south/southwest), it feels so much colder. Maybe it’s because you can’t escape the cold unless you want to empty your wallet on heating bills (really expensive here). You put on your layers before you even get out of bed. :(
Sounds like youre in a poorly insulated dwelling. By comparison, I’m in a 14 year old apartment in Melbourne and hardly needed the heater this winter. Its got a heat pump air con / heater so heating / cooling not expensive
Might be. I’ve lived in a house in Warrnambool and a house in Ballarat, so no neighbours above, below or beside to help keep my unit consistent like I did in Edmonton.
I’m also not a builder or any tradie, so I’m not sure what the houses are really made of. I just know the noticeable differences between how I felt in houses and apartments in Canada vs houses in south/southwest Victoria.
I did live in an apartment in Preston for a short stint, and didn’t use heating or cooling at all. It was lovely, sans the meth heads upstairs.
If youre renting in regional areas, they probably have no interest in making it energy efficient as they probably think that’s “woke”. Speak to your agent about insulation at the very least.
Surely not everyday. Just every day, right?
When I moved from the west coast of Canada to the east coast, I was surprised how different the clouds and the sunrise looked. There are like, a lot more fluffy clouds, and the sunsets are more vivid across the entire sky.
Stopped drinking almost entirely, because moving also meant finding new friends (who prefer other activities than drinking).
Since physical places wasn’t specified, how much nicer the threadiverse (Lemmy) is compared to Reddit, way less toxic from my experience.
Eye contact / greetings between strangers
*in the USA
I’m originally from the south where everyone wears plastic smiles and waves in passing and all that.
Then I went to the northeast where it’s more eyes on the horizon. A smile and a wave is met with a raised eyebrow or a sneer, and friends commonly show their comfort with each other using insults.
Then out to the midwest where zero eye contact gets you stared at, but heavy eye contact is taken as a challenge. It has to be just the right amount, and I’m still trying to figure it out after years.
Here in NM, out on my walks around the neighborhood every day, I say either “good morning” or “hello” to everyone I pass, which varies from one to perhaps ten people per walk, 99% respond in same. It’s not fake, it’s just common courtesy to acknowledge other people. I see about half of them every day, and I know of two regulars who won’t respond, so I don’t say anything to them.
There was one guy who enthusiastically said “good morning!” every time for a couple of years, we even stopped and chatted briefly a couple of times. I didn’t see him for an entire summer, then when I saw him again he wouldn’t say hello. Then he started saying hello again, on his own. I don’t push. Some people have a lot going on.
I don’t know about “heavy eye contact is a challenge”. At about 15 feet apart, walking toward each other look to make brief eye contact and say “good morning”. By the time you’ve said the words, they’re nearly past you, and they either respond or don’t. That’s all there is to it.
If I had friends who responded to a smile and a wave with a sneer, I think we wouldn’t be friends for long.
My experience is in CO specifically and may depend on a lot more than my location. Just generalizing to try to meet the spirit of the question / story flow.
A good friend of mine who went on a similar nomadic journey settled in NM and said similar great things about it. I wish I could remember which city… one of the biggest ones?
you are getting sneers and glares from NorthEast USA because we hate fake pleasantries/smiles and southern nazis.
Many people don’t make eye contact any longer. Things have changed.
Yeah people in the NE aren’t rude, they just don’t care to pretend when it comes to that kind of bullshit
South, northeast and midwest of the USA
Yes. I debated whether I should specify or if it’d sound dumb / be obvious.
Now I see I should have, since I made Rothe sad
The culture of right of way between pedestrians and cars. Where I grew up, you could walk out to the double yellow and stand there and cars wouldn’t give a shit. They’d just keep driving and expect you to stay out of the way.
Now where I live, if you just glance at a car when you’re walking they’ll stop where they are to let you cross.
It all gets very confusing for a pedestrian when you also get out of town drivers that don’t adhere to that same culture.
That annoys me when cars clearly have the right of way or stop before I’m even close to crossing the road. They could be already past by the time I get there, but they stop anyway. If you keep driving and I keep walking nobody will disturb the other.
Yeah, I’m a little torn between both sides. It can be more efficient when cars take the right of way, but pedestrian safety is absolutely more important than efficiency.
Yeah it’s surprising how opposite it can be.
The other day I was walking my dog and I have to be careful to face away from the street because people keep stopping for us to cross when she’s just sniffing at something.
Then we actually did cross the street at an all way stop intersection, and cars came to a stop in all directions! However we got halfway across and a new car came around the bend and almost hit us. Despite the stop sign. Despite all other cars already stopped. Despite me and the dog in the crosswalk
I didn’t expect the trees to scream at me
Summer cicadas?
Yup.
Moved from the south to the Midwest and my mouth still orders “unsweet tea”. Some waitstaff have no idea what I mean.
If you don’t specify in the south you get diabetea.
What is unsweet tea?
The opposite of sweet tea.
So like, regular tea?
In the US many restaurants serve iced tea. In the south they make iced tea with way too much sugar in it, so if you just order iced tea they’ll ask “sweet or unsweet”.
…Or they just serve you sweet tea
No, it is just tea. The word “unsweet” is not in their vocabulary.
Order tea and a large glass of ice and pour (any type) of tea over the ice. Usually comes out room temp instead of iced however it’s a great drink option at many restaurants that otherwise only have pop or juice to drink.
They do have iced tea in most places but if you ask for unsweet, they look at you like you’re crazy.
Just how antisocial people can be, they often feel dead inside to me. Rarely smiling, very little low effort social interaction. It eats away at my soul.
The inaccessibility of anything in the DIY and construction side of life if you don’t own a business in the industry. I was used to doing woodwork without the need for a table saw, now I can’t get a simple piece of wood cut accurately without being a building contractor or having my own kitted out workshop. I loved working with aluminium and used to buy from suppliers, now it’s inaccessible to me.
I’m half way on this, I was just talking to my buddy about this. The last three years I worked pretty much by myself and I think it took a toll on me. Though when I’m in Japan it’s a strange paradox, I feel so comfortable. Maybe because the interactions are minimal and that’s all I can handle after seeing 1-3 people a day.
I’ve spent most of my adult life alone, and those small social interactions are what pulls me through. Here you get looked at like there’s something wrong with you if you greet someone when walking past them in the street.
Oh yeah I sort of get that. I was having a good evening going home to see my girlfriend, went to grab a few beers after work at the gas station and smiled at someone. The guy got pissed and said “what are you looking at removed?” I was like where did that come from. And I’m not scrawny or anything, especially compared to that shrimp.
God damn, at least where I live outward hostility is as frowned upon as any other social interactions.
That why I like staying in Japan and Korea.
I guess the “slur” got modded out but I think it should have been left in to show what I mean, instead of a man looks at another man having a good evening and smiles, then gets called a slur. Some of these mental gymnastics are exhausting. It’s something that happened to me in person, I don’t know why it should be turned a blind eye to… was it necessary to censor it?–I mean I’m new here.
It was not necessary. It was fucking stupid.
I’m not a fan of over policing, reddit became that way and no one liked that.
It looks like an automod that redacts words. This is the biggest instance and a popular community, so I’m not too surprised by it.
I see.
Disgusting. Automoderation is assinine. Robots don’t get to tell humans what to say.
When we moved into a new house some years ago, there were only rabbits and no squirrels. The squirrels have since moved in.
Losing my job. I moved closer to work. (That wasnt the goal. It was just coincidental)
I moved 100 miles, from one city to another in the same US state. Now I can’t find good chinese food to save my life… Panda Express is unfortunately the best I can find.
Realizing there’s no good Chinese food in your area is a soul crushing experience
So much!
From The South and moved to the PNW.
Lack of thunder and lightning is crazy. Like I went from hearing it all the time to once or twice a year.
Being able to see snow on the mountains while it’s over 60°F in the valley.
How there isn’t any warm water occurring in nature.
You can’t find Cuban bread in every grocery store.
Man, I have so many things that shocked me. And many still do, lol.
One of the many things you have to do is find the many hot springs of the Pacific Northwest.
Some are warm water, some are downright boiling fucking hot.
Yes! My partner and I wanna go to Bagby soon. I forgot to exclude them from the no hot water thing lol
I want to move to the PNW so much.
Do it! Such a good decision
That I need the same amount of time to the big city.
Distance to the city: 18 km -> 10 km Time to the city by train: 19 min -> 12 min Time to train station: 3 min -> 10 min
