191–200 of 284 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if it’s limited to 2 letters.
Because in the US, where the company was founded, the states have 2 letter abbreviations in common language. I wish people could use the ISO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:AU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2:US
I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (eh?) for 23 years and we have similar stories. There is an island that is part of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton with a city named Sydney (so Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada) with population of ~30K. Every few years we get a tourist that confuses that with Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. They generally realize something is wrong when they switch planes in Halifax from a Jet (B…
New Mexico Magazine has a column every month where people tell their tales of people thinking that the U.S. state of New Mexico is in the nation of Mexico. Things like insurance and credit card companies cancelling their accounts because they moved out of the country. Apparently it happens all the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in London Ontario, right by the Thames. Got hassled at customs in Netherlands being asked why my Canadian passport was issued from England. People always say they can't hear the accent when I say I'm from London (besides that time at customs they were accusing my lisp of sounding a bit English) There's also a Paris Ontario
There's also an Ontario, CA in southern California.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite similar pair is Yinchuan (a city in western China) vs. Incheon (a satellite city of Seoul and where their bigger airport is). They sound very similar in Chinese, and in China people usually refer to Incheon airport as "the Seoul airport" (a lot of average Chinese people probably don't even know Seoul has another airport), and to make things worse, the IATA airport codes for the two are INC vs. ICN. So the…
Three years ago I booked a flight to San Juan (SJU), Puerto Rico by mistake. I was supposed to go to San Jose (SJO) in Costa Rica. I will never forget the moment I read "SJO" in the email realizing I should have booked a flight to "SJU". Then going into Google, and typing SJO to find out where I was actually flying. I was prepared for it to be in Asia, Africa or anywhere. Luckily, Puerto Rico was just a small detour…
There was a time where I use to fly internationally very frequently. Very use to having the manager sort out the car/flight/hotel with our travel agent - so for the most part I just grabbed the tickets and go. Manager asked me - can you go to London? It was pretty cold in Minnesota, and London sounded nice. Turned brain off, got on the flight, and landed way too early. London, Canada... ffs, and it was even colder th…
I live in London Ontario, right by the Thames. Got hassled at customs in Netherlands being asked why my Canadian passport was issued from England. People always say they can't hear the accent when I say I'm from London (besides that time at customs they were accusing my lisp of sounding a bit English) There's also a Paris Ontario
For anyone who doesn't know the area those two bridges are rather different in pretty much every respect:
A friend of mine arrived in the Bay Area from India years ago. As a gay man he wanted to visit the Castro in San Francisco so he hopped on the BART train and went to a stop called Castro (Valley). I think he walked around for a bit wondering what all the fuss was about (Castro Valley is not particularly gay, or interesting at all for that matter).
In the 1970s the British Museum in London borrowed King Tutankhamen's treasures, which had never before been seen outside Egypt. People flocked to see the exhibition from all over the world. Quite often tourists would get into a London taxi and say "Take me to Tutankhamen", and then find themselves in South London, at Tooting Common.
Instead, the taxi took her to Stamford Bridge (the village in Yorkshire which was the site of a famous battle in 1066).
This reminds of a story I vaguely recall of a lady in Europe who followed GPS directions which took her to Italy or something from Belgium, instead of the airport 30 minutes away. Might be fuzzy on the details or truth of that story.
He had made the journey by car several times before, but that year was the first time that he tried to use his new satellite navigation system. When he stopped for fuel, the satnav stopped giving him directions, so he asked someone in the petrol station for help.
Unfortunately, the helpful passer-by had misunderstood and entered the small Bavarian village of Rom, 1000 miles north of Rome, as the destination. The driver noticed that the roads he was following were unfamiliar, but assumed that the satnav had mapped out a better route.
To make matters worse, when he arrived in Rom and got out of the car to try to figure out what had gone wrong, he didn't apply the handbrake properly. The car rolled backwards, injuring him as he was dragged along the road by the door, before colliding with the village sign (and being written off as a total loss).