Do people’s brain just switch off when they become a tourist in other countries? Stopping in the middle of doorways, middle of sidewalks etc oblivious they are not the only people.
Do people’s brain just switch off when they become a tourist in other countries? Stopping in the middle of doorways, middle of sidewalks etc oblivious they are not the only people.
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Probably. Part of the reason some people go on holiday is for the brain to switch off so you can chill and relax.
No they are on holiday relaxing and they might not know the culture. Go easy on they are bringing money to your area.
I live in a touristy area. I don’t want to be culturally insensitive to any group, so I won’t list them, but I can sometimes guess the person’s nationality from the annoying behavior the exhibit.
And before anyone says anything about Americans, I’m an American in an American city. Every country’s tourists are annoying in their own unique way.
People do that in their own town too.
I saw a guy take off his shoes and step off the boardwalk into nearly boiling water at yellowstone. My vote is yes, lots of people think anywhere they don’t live is Disney world.
People who travel have huge main character energy. They are REALLY into themselves, very proud of traveling
Some people live their lives with their heads up their asses all the time. They don’t switch their brains off when they become tourists because they were never on in the first place.
Ever been to Costco?
I get vacation brain. . And when I am in a tourist place I can act like this. Not intentionally. I will see something that interests me and my brain zeros in on it. My husband has had to give me a nudge to remind I’m not the only person there. lol
It may be annoying but it’s actually more of a compliment that they are enjoying where they are.
Sounds like every grocery store trip
My in-laws did the the entire time at Disney World.
They’d stop in the middle of a path and have a conversation, oblivious to the fact that other people exist.
i feel you twin. shi so frustrating
Yes, and they don’t even have to be in another country. I drive for a living in a tourist town (USA). The sheer amount of “La La land” drivers is astonishing.
I need to remind myself, sometimes multiple times a day, that I might be in the same La La land when I go on vacation. Otherwise I would be the most grumpy driver ever.
It’s a lot of things. The fucking worst are the groups of more than two. They’re always disorganized so stop and coordinate often.
For others, I think it’s exciting and confusing to be in a different country. The signs are different, cars/ people may travel on the opposite side, and the street layout may be confusing to you. And then there’s the fact they’re trying to absorb the experience so they’re looking about and almost TRYING to space out.
For the doorways thing, I think people get a good look at the inside and maybe panic a bit because it’s not what they expected, so they stop for a bit to consider whether they should go in or not
I think there’s a big overlap between people who can afford to travel often and people who live in desolate suburbs where they don’t really need to pay attention to what’s going on around them. Then you add the stress and novelty of being in a new place and it’s just hopeless. I’ve noticed it with my parents, they live in a sparsely populated city, their grocery store aisles are like double wide compared to what we have in the inner city. They’re just not used to going places on foot or using transit, bike lanes, being around crowds. It’s easy to forget that most of the people around us arent tourists, they’re trying to get home after a long day at work and don’t wanna deal with us blocking the walkways. It’s second nature to me because I live in a big city and use the LRT to go downtown regularly, but it’s easy for my parents to get distracted and stop paying attention to things like not standing in a walkway or using a bike lane as a sidewalk. I remind them and get on their case but not every family has someone doing that lol.
Those types of people do it everywhere, not just on vacation.
I see this happening every time I go to the supermarket.
Yup. It starts at the airport where people are no longer capable of doing anything on their own. It is truly amazing and hilarious the questions passengers would ask of airline staff. How do I know? I was a captain, walking through the terminal would garner a plethora of questions.
I was at The Met recently and watched a woman get barked at by security for touching a Greek sculpture. As she was walking away i heard her say to her husband “I don’t know what made me do that!” Clearly it wasn’t a case of her being an asshole since she understood and appreciated what she’d done wrong, I guess it was just vacation brain.
The book “The color of magic” by Terry Pratchet (Discworld series) does a great job of showing how tourists feel invincible as though they are standing behind plexiglass.
It’s happened to me when there are big protests that are getting out of hand and then I realize we need to get the hell out of there.
Honestly when I worked at an international airport we would always joke that people would leave their brains outside of the terminal and travel light. So I’d wager their brains shutoff right before they go on holiday already lol
Ever been to Costco? Same damn thing.
I deal with the same when I go to a grocery store. There are no tourists there.
At one point, I think they were actually giving tourists tickets for doing this in New York City. (But don’t quote me on that.) Regardless, it’s a tremendous problem in certain parts of New York City and very frustrating for those of us trying to get from A to B.
Confusion from being in unfamiliar territory
Oh so Costco is another country now?
My favorite thing to do is stop right behind them and set up shop waiting patiently behind them and have everyone notice the situation and start laughing. To be fair, the people behind me and those behind them… start getting upset.
As someone who lives in Orlando, yes. Some of the most egregious:
Missed their exit? Pull over to the shoulder and reverse to it.
Looking for something while they drive? 15 mph in whatever lane they please, holding up traffic.
Left the theme park at night in their rental car? Daytime running lights are just enough that they don’t realize they have no headlights on.
Don’t be so quick to judge, I’m sure you have done similar things. We’re creatures of habit, so being in a new environment can easily throw people off.
Ask yourself that question next time you go on holiday
That’s not being a tourist. That’s every time I go to a movie, an airport, Costco—just about everywhere.
Sensory overload homie. Hell, it happens to me at the grocery sometimes. So many new and different things you glitch out a bit
People in general have very poor spatial awareness.
Anyone that has gone through some type training (stuff like safety, maybe security contracting or even medical assistance etc) can probably relate.
It just so happens in our home countries on our regular commutes, we’re more practiced.
Kinda like how you can probably navigate through your house at night without the lights on to get a glass of water or get to the toilet.
You pluck someone and chuck them in a different city, country, language, busy thoroughfare, bunch of sights and distractions, trying to navigate with google maps with maybe a bar or two of signal, on holiday mode?
Yep they’re gonna look very oblivious.
Bro people do this shit in the grocery store. Traveling has nothing to do with it.
information overload. yes. literally probably is what is happening.
add in selfish personality traits and you have some worsenthan others
Chances are they do the same annoying, self-centered shit in their own countries too.
People often complain about tourists, but all of us are tourists once we step out of our immediate region and I’m sure we’ve all done something that the locals find annoying.
My take is that if you don’t want to be bothered by tourists, then move to where there aren’t any. But that will probably suck more because that means it’s a less desirable area to be.
Yes.
Particularly stopping in middle of the aisle in a supermarket when I’m trying to do a quick food shop before I catch the bus home..
Or when they walk side by side taking up the whole of the pavement and walking straight towards me. Fortunately I’m big enough that I just stand there and they have to walk around me. Far safer than stepping out into the road.
And don’t even get me going about how they drive. I’m sure many have lobotomies as they come across the border. The number of near misses I’ve seen of pedestrians almost hit by drivers who have no idea what they are doing.
Sadly tourist season has just started and will be on going until beginning of September.
I see this at my nearest shopping mall every time I visit. It’s not limited to tourists.
The worst is when people get to the end of the escalator and just stand there deciding where to walk next. There’s people behind you who are trying to get off the escalator!
It’s said that your brainpower decreases by 20% when you’re in a foreign country. Just processing all the new information… language, culture, how to get around, where to stay, where to eat etc. takes up a huge part of your brain apparently.
I’m stressed out and overwhelmed since I travel solo. I really tried to be mindful of my environment though 👍👍👍
As an American, I can tell you we have plenty of homegrown Americans that act like this at their local Walmart. It’s astounding how entirely oblivious some people are to another human standing directly behind them in an aisle, waiting patiently to be noticed so they can politely be on their way, only to figure out that a verbal statement of, “MOVE,” is required to snap them out of their ignorance. Or, when they’re waiting for a red light to turn green, and it turns green, they just sit there and would entirely miss the light if someone behind them didn’t honk to wake them up
It’s not just tourists that decide to block doorways, aisles, sidewalks, roads, etc….
No, but I am in a new environment then. This behaviour OP is describing I also do when I’m somewhere new.
People who live there and aren’t lost do that too.
More people than you’d think aren’t able to walk with umbrellas properly.
They have zero awareness if the space that surrounds them.
it can be very overwhelming being in a new place, it’s hard to register everything around you, including where is the middle of the sidewalk is
They’re most certainly acting the way they always do. I don’t believe considerate people suddenly turn up their cunt knobs to vastly annoying once the boarder threshold has been reached.
Vacation brain. They actually don’t have anywhere to be and… because it’s a new place, all for a sudden… it is not the real world. Not real people. They don’t have real problems. They are… absolutely relaxed. And they forget everything about everything else for other people.
Common phenomenon in airports, too.
Jetlag is a big part of this. Are you at your best at 3AM? Well, their bodies think it’s 3AM.
I can’t believe the number of morons that walk through a door or get out of the lift and then they just stop. One of the worst places I’ve ever seen this is on cruise ships. And it’s all age groups. People are fucking stupid.
Depends on how beautiful your architecture is – honestly if I’m somewhere new and I’ve never seen something so gorgeous I will occasionally tend to freeze in my tracks and gawk for a moment. It’s not intentional and it comes from a sense of wonder – but I have enough spatial awareness not to block a path completely.
A lot of tourists are suburbanites who just genuinely don’t go out in their own city very much anyway and don’t have much in the way of etiquette.
they’re just more relaxed, less up tight about getting somewhere on time.
you get people like you describe here (s america) without them needing to be tourists. it’s just cultural whether people are relaxed or not.
Trade shows are worse. Big groups of six or eight people standing in the aisles every 10 meters forcing you to walk around. It’s rude as fuck.
I think a lot of tourists are not city folk and don’t know sidewalk etiquette for busy places.
That’s not exclusive to tourists, locals do that too all around the world.
I think some of it is cultural. So I took my daughter to Paris last year and a woman screamed at me for standing on the left side of a busy escalator. She yelled that the left was for people walking and the right was for standing. I had no idea. That’s not a thing where I’m from. Where I live people stand on the right, the left, the middle. If you want to walk down and someone’s in your way you just wait patiently behind. I didn’t make that mistake twice. I have to admit, it’s a much more efficient way of using an escalator but I didn’t know until she lost it on me for being inconsiderate.
You gotta understand tourists, specially first timers, are in cognitive overload. Everything is different. The tickets, the way you walk, the streets, the locals.
Traveling is like having bad luck: nothing goes your way, though gotta go with the flow, and in the end you miss it. Because it changed you.
My husband works a block from Times Square. He says the tourists most annoying habit is suddenly just stopping for no reason.
I know people like this in my home country. Some people act like NPCs at home but it’s definitely worse while on vacation.
This is just what I observe about 10% of people doing in any public space at any given time.
They truly don’t think about anyone but themselves.
Obviously you’ve never encountered an Asian tour bus in the Golden circle.
People don’t have to be a tourist to do that…
people are usually too busy looking at their surroundings to notice their own actions. when you’re in a familiar place, you usually have places to be and therefore aren’t stopping at random places to glance around