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.

Moved from Midwest to West to South. In the South, they use “How are ya?” as a greeting. I was not aware. So for the first few weeks/months, I was answering them honestly and just loving how friendly everyone was!

Took me a while to understand you’re just supposed to say “Good-n-you?”

Felt like a fuckin idiot.

How convenient places are near me. Where I was, I had to drive 45 miles out and back to get anywhere. Now for a while, everything is 5 - 10 minutes. Chump change for miles and yeah if I really do want to broaden my exploration, can go a bit further, but not when I need something as before.

I walk a lot more now that the nearest store is across the street and not 3 miles away.

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.

I don’t live terribly far from where I grew up. I have seen so many snakes in my neighborhood. Growing up I knew what a snake was but never really saw any. I had to mow my lawn slower the other day because I saw two snakes in the grass.

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.

Since physical places wasn’t specified, how much nicer the threadiverse (Lemmy) is compared to Reddit, way less toxic from my experience.

Stores are open on Sundays
Surprises me every time

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.

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

The way it changed my mental perception of how far apart buildings are. I moved from North Carolina to Massachusetts, and distinctly remember that the first time I went back to visit the city I grew up in, I had a reaction along the lines of “wtf, did like a bomb go off here or something?” upon seeing it, because I’d become used to buildings being taller and closer together and suddenly by contrast the parking lots with scattered short buildings and wide roads reminded me of those pictures you see of cities after a war or disaster, where there’ll be a few buildings relatively intact looking surrounded by flattened grey.

Every time I go back there now, I get a really eerie feeling because even though for the most part, the buildings haven’t changed at all, the place feels as if they have, like everything has been squashed vertically and stretched horizontally.

I didn’t expect the trees to scream at me

Stopped drinking almost entirely, because moving also meant finding new friends (who prefer other activities than drinking).

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.