• Beer
• Old buildings
• a statue of a peeing boy
• a forest with huge Borch trres with flowers underneath
• castles or manors everywhere.

About the UK.

I really liked the Edwardian and Victorian heritage. You’ll find remains of beautifull crafted industrial stuff and craftsmanship that is nearly lost.

Practically every house and apartment has (access to) a sauna. If not inside the apartment, there will most often be a shared sauna in the basement.

About the UK, I’m going to go a bit deeper and note that it was somehow eye-opening that there’s a whole society that actually just daily drives English. For my whole life before the visits to UK and later US, English was the language of the internet and some specific international situations where it was most people’s second language. Until well into my mid-20s, I basically didn’t have real life contact with any community that would just speak English natively, despite speaking it myself fairly okay-ish.

I lived in London for a few years and it always amazed me to see foxes just roaming about. I still think it’s cool.

I’m from another country, foxes are not really a thing here.

Apfelschorle

Walking to a supermarket, riding your bicycle to work.

You asked about what we thought fascinating of the UK and what you might be taking for granted so I’ll let 'er rip.

I felt the almost omnipresent pressure of an imperialistic black hole that pulled everything to it’s centre. I walked the streets of London and saw enormous edifices to grief and religiosity and greed. I saw graffiti from people yearning to express themselves against systems that often held them down. I saw stolen art and belongings of my ancestors hung in galleries to be admired and gawked at. I saw the whims of kings cut entire forests to the ground so that they could “worship” a distant speck of Christianity while hunting their favourite game in their historically exclusive fields. I saw the hollowed out guts of the Industrial Revolution turned into trendy shopping centres and into walkable cities. I saw Palestinian protestors laying on the streets of Oxford as graduates in their gowns stepped around and over them. I saw the land literally wrinkle before my eyes as I went North to Edinburgh. I heard Texans make a fuss at the top of Arthur’s Seat. I tried to see the Queen’s yacht from a parking garage because I didn’t want to pay (rather disappointing). I noticed that almost none of your industrial coolers and fridges actually kept anything cold (but the lights worked and I think I remember hearing the fans whirring, blowing lukewarm air). I saw a doorman enjoy his job and crack some jokes and making people smile. I saw the king’s “gateman” with a bullet proof vest and a semi-automatic rifle intimidate tourists to keep them away from his gate. I saw a highschooler throw an orange at a fabulous black actor at the Globe, and another thrown orange from a different high schooler soon after - the play kept going. I saw weapons of war used as posts in the ground. I saw a cyclist get chewed out by a “pensioner” for going too fast and almost hitting her. I saw works of art painted on discarded gum.

I bought a Yorkshire pudding burrito and walked far too long to find a place to sit and eat it - rather tasty.

Fascinating place.

Whales, northern lights, reindeer

Canal bridges that open to let ships through for some reason? I often see tourist making pictures of that.

Trees which change color in the fall

Opposite: I (US-ian) was visiting friends in Germany and they took me on a bike ride in the woods.

“Look!!” (Bike sudden halt, stop and point into a tree with full arm) “a squirrel!”

When I lived in the US, I lived in cities on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. People who weren’t used to river traffic would get excited about riverboats and barges.

And people from other climates always got excited about snow. Even the slightest flurries were cause for celebration.

Now I live in the Andes, and the exciting things here that the locals take for granted (or even count as nuisances) are the volcanoes. I can see one from my apartment. Four years in, and I still admire it every day.

In the UK, the thing I thought was fascinating was just the sheer amount of history literally everywhere. Like, 2000-year-old stone monuments in people’s sheep pastures. It made me understand how extraordinarily young my native country and my current home country both are.

My area isn’t too tourist heavy until you go to the mountains, but I once saw a bunch of tourists crowd around a rattler and one of the dumb fucks got bit. Closest thing I can think of, actually correction I’ve seen some tourists amazed by a sand storm coming off a dry lakebed on a turnout along the 15.

Mountains, Great beer and legal weed.

School mass shootings. For some reason the rest of the world loses their minds over them.

Black squirrels. They’re very normal to us but I find a lot of people who travel here, especially from the U.S. are shocked to see them lol