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A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

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Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#271

Post by mercer »

willcipriano wrote: post #88
Spooky23 wrote: post #9

I used to work in a State Capitol, and would occasionally run into confused tourists in strange places, or very much lost. They were always Chinese or German and I’d run into them two or three times a year. One couple thought they were in Niagara Falls. Another somehow found themselves stuck in a secured employee parking garage. The strangest one was a person on a self guided tour who took a wrong turn and ended up w…

>Another somehow found themselves stuck in a secured employee parking garage. Note to self, if in a secure area of a government facility without permission pretend to be a German tourist.

Or Russian!

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#272

Post by yongjik »

nonfamous wrote: post #262
yongjik wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as impressive, but there used to be two stations in Seoul's circular subway line 2, named Sinchon and Sincheon, on the opposite corner of Seoul. In older Romanization scheme it was worse: Shinch'on vs. Shinch'ŏn. (I guess it didn't help that they sound almost identical to an untrained English speaker.) Sadly (for me), they renamed one station, so they aren't confusing any more. Boo.

The Chicago “El” subway system has three stations named “Chicago”. None are in the downtown core. I always wonder about tourists hopping on the Blue line at O’Hare and where they end up.

Oh yeah, that reminds me of a bus line in Daejeon that had these three consecutive stops:

    West Daejeon Intersection Station (seo-daejeon-negeori-yeok)
    West Daejeon Intersection (seo-daejeon-negeori)
    West Daejeon Station Intersection (seo-daejeon-yeok-negeori)
...at least they should be within walking distance.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#273

Post by mvolfik »

smnrchrds wrote: post #136
__s wrote: post #124

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 a Paris Ontario Also Lisbon, Dublin, Vienna, Seville, and Copenhagen. There used to be a Berlin, but it was renamed to Kitchener in 1916. https://i.redd.it/zhp2c11izm541.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_to_Kitchener_name_chang...

There's also Moscow, Idaho somewhere in there

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#274

Post by mhewett »

scirocco wrote: post #186
fishywang wrote: post #84

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…

I once called a travel agent to book a flight to San Jose (California). She mis-heard me as wanting to go to Santa Fe (New Mexico). She called me a few days later in a panic, saying "Sorry, I accidentally booked you a flight to San Jose. I'll cancel it and re-book it". Two wrongs do make a right.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#275

Post by usr1106 »

Symbiote wrote: post #235
Ichthypresbyter wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently in several cities the staff of the Slovakian and Slovenian embassies meet regularly to exchange wrongly addressed mail.

Nowadays, several smaller European countries recommend prefixing the postcode with the ISO country code: Kúpeľná 1/A SK-811 02 Bratislava 1 Slovakia Pošta Slovenije d.o.o. SI-2500 MARIBOR Slovenia In fact, I see it's a general recommendation for international post: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_codes#On_the_us...

While others like the German post does recommend not use abbreviations, but full country names. As this discussion showed, there are plenty of possibilities to get abbreviations confused.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#276

Post by quickthrower2 »

landgenoot wrote: post #169
quickthrower2 wrote: post #140

The best I can do is Amsterdam 2001, got off the train station in the city, couldn't find the hotel, grabbed a cab and told them the name of the hotel, took us to some suburb 5 miles away or something. Something was lost in translation there. Thought 'oh shit'. Got on a train back to the original point. Realised hotel was just on the other side of the square.

"Lost in translation" in Amsterdam? The cab driver ripped you off

Yeah I was being a bit dry there :-)

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#277

Post by usr1106 »

Never heard about about that airline, although I flew from Germany to the US more than once only few years later. I would also have claimed that no way there was a direct flight from Frankfurt to Bangor.

However the airline existed and served Frankfurt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Airways

So probably even the weird connection existed. The Spiegel article from 1977 is online, if you want to read it in German https://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-40736384.html

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#278

Post by perl4ever »

Qworg wrote: post #86
quercusa wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also Cairo, not to be confused with Illinois or Egypt, as well as Albany (not to be confused with NY).

Different pronunciations - if you're going to kay-row, you're going to Illinois.

Cairo-Durham in upstate NY is also kay-row.

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#279

Post by ma2rten »

cyxxon wrote: post #206
ma2rten wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this a very long time ago? Staples is a well known chain of office supply stores in Germany as well.

As a German, I only know Staples from American TV shows and movies. Is there Staples IN Germany? And yes, I live in a city of several hundred thousand inhabitants.

It seems like they are more concentrated in West-Germany. There are apparently none in Berlin, for example.

https://staples.de/filial-finder.html

Re: A lost tourist who thought Maine was San Francisco

#280

Post by legojoey17 »

tdeck wrote: post #148
__s wrote: post #124

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.

And Ontario, CA has a bottled water provider called Niagara[0]. Not to be confused with Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada. When I saw a bottle of Niagra water in California (as I'm from Ontario) I was unbelievably confused.

[0]: https://www.niagarawater.com/

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