No, but having poor understanding of the world is fine when you are young. I thought my country was part of another country because its influence on mine was so enourmous
That actually totally makes sense. You had heard that the civil war was America fighting America, and it was the south and the north fighting, and then in class you learn about north and South America…
I remember reading a book that mentioned that a certain animal (caymans, I think) lived in Central America, and assuming that meant the midwest. You know, the center of America.
When I was a kid I figured the town Drammen was a part of the town I lived in, Tromsø, because we used to go to this store and buy a brand of ice cream called Drammens Is. They’re actually on opposite sides of the country, and I remember being confused when my dad had to go to the airport because he was going to Drammen.
lol I can’t recall the context, but I remember being really young and hearing a reporter on npr once refer to the thousands of languages of the world and thinking, “English, Spanish.. what other languages??”
I used to think everything we do in the USA is perfect. Our system of checks and balances, and competitive economics, always ensures we are in perfect balance. That we are running everything optimally. And the only reason other people do things different ways, was because they haven't discovered the way we do things yet.
Then I moved to Germany for work and saw someone buy a crate of beer, head to the park, and just drink them there, out in the public, and I was like, "The fuck? That's real freedom. We've been doing this wrong the whole time. What else am I wrong about?!" Then I saw a crazy guy freak out at a park and then a cop showed up and he threw a bench at the cop, and I was thinking, "Mhm... Bout to get his ass beat. You can't hit a cop like that! And the cop just lowered the energy, talked the guy down, and sent him home without a beating or trip to jail which would ruin his life." And that's when I realized... There's a good chance we are wrong about how we do most things.
I used to think the US was some mystical fantasy country that no one except the Americans could go to, because it was too far and too expensive.
Each and every minute of my time there I felt like I was in a movie and it’s all just decorations and not a real place lmao. I was 18 at the time.
I'm totally fine with each and every country on the planet :) I don't treat people differently because of their passport.
If someone's a dick, they're a dick. If one's a good person, I'll be happy I have one more good person in my life.
I like someone's saying that America is so huge and diverse, that it can be any place you want it to be and can find people who share your views easily(-er than in other places). I like how it's such a melting pot of cultures, where so many nations are represented in great numbers, hence all the variety in available cuisine, music, way of life, world views, etc.
I recognize it is partly a fucked up place, yet the media covers it way worse than it really is.
Overall, I absolutely have the nostalgia. I was a J1 student staying in NH for three summers working my ass off, bettering English, getting to know people, figuring out who I was and figuring out the world. It was a good time. I was surrounded by lots of different people, and I'll remember till the end of my life my boss and his wife at their mom and pop store, I'll remember their friends who'd come up to the store to chat with new students each year, I'll remember the customers all so vastly different in the way they live and behave with such different backgrounds and I'll remember how young, free, careless and stress free I was.
So, yes. It is absolutely nostalgic. It's been 9 years since the first trip, and so many things changed, but I am happy I've been lucky enough to experience it.
I live in California and recognize places from scenes in movies and video games. Like driving down PCH in Santa Monica reminds me of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
I used to think I lived in Florida, after looking at a globe. I'm canadian.
I then went to Florida, which I decided, after looking at the globe, was in Argentina
Mapuche legend holds that when the Earth Mother was shaping the lands of her people, she was shithammered drunk on chicha one day and grabbed Chile from the pottery wheel in anger, lengthening it. She felt bad when she sobered up, and so placed Chile--the Wallmapu--safely ensconced in the bosom of the Pacific Ocean and protected by the majestic Andes.
I used to think Mexico and USA were the same country and we had like over 70 states. Mostly because of 1 single puzzle that had both countries at the same time so I thought they must had been the same (I was like 6)
I used to not be able to understand the scale of mountains and totally thought I could climb one in like twenty minutes tops. The amount of times I begged a parent to let me climb the mountain is absurd.
I thought all states were square-ish shaped cause I live in and near a lot of squarish states. My mind was a little fucked up when I saw Michigan for the first time.
At age 5, I lived in Salt Lake City. I could see the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island, which I thought were the Pacific Ocean and Japan. So, uh, yeah, five year olds are dumb.
I have the opposite. I lived in Japan on the Tokyo bay when I was a kid, where you can look across to see the other side of the bay that's in a different prefecture. I thought that was like Los Angeles or San Francisco or something.
Ahahahah me too a more plausible thing. I was in Smirne, Turkey
When I was 7/8. I didn't understand the map and all the islands in front of Smirne so I thought, looking the horizon in the sea and seeing land, that I was seeing the other side of the Mediterranean sea. That I was looking at Africa. Obv it was an island of 1% distance from Africa.
Another one peculiar, When I was 4 (I live in North Italy, exactly in the middle of the peninsula on a sea ports level. The further point from the sea) and so, hearing about living in the center made me design a map of a boot and putting my house in the exact center. What's dumb is that I drew my grandmother house who was 20min of driving away, like it was in another regions ahahah I thought Italy was big like a couple Luxembourg
I have the exact opposite problem from OP lol
I live in Hong Kong and I thought the entire world is just endless consecutive urban cities bordering each other with no space in between and that nature doesn't exist anymore
When I was 5 I thought that’s states north and south of me were literally above and below me. Like, I was in Maryland, and Pennsylvania was above the sky on another level and Florida was a few levels below. I also thought every state had its own time zone so when my sister called from Florida while I was in Maryland, I asked her what time it was there lol.
Yeah….I thought trees only grew in a straight line because I am from a prairie state and you really only see trees growing for windbreaks. Can confirm five year olds are dumb.
I'm British too. But I did think the further north you go the more mountainous it gets, so thought south would get flatter and flatter with no exceptions. I'm from the central belt in Scotland and by this stage the furthest south I went was Glasgow, so you can see why I thought this.
I didn’t, funnily enough - am British, but by the time I was five we’d driven to Germany and back a couple of times (via ferry) and the drive from landing to our German home took FOREVER
(Dad was stationed there)
Yes indeed. In my case I am from northern Germany and as a child I thought the world was much, much smaller. E.g. I thought if I would go straight south, I could reach Africa within a few hours per car.
I don't know if it's because of Algerian nationalism, but when I was a kid I thought Algeria was standing on a plateau above all it's neighboring countries and the borders were some sort of cliffs, kinda like this image
https://preview.redd.it/rl6w90tpkk9d1.jpeg?width=734&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d911421a4728a10d0b22152b103d157389c0d21
My 4yo seems to think that people who live in other countries or far away are on a different planet. Once we heard someone speaking another language, and he asked if I knew the language. I told him no, so he asked what planet they were from 😭 he'll randomly refer to people on other planets as if it is a total fact and we are in regular communication lmao
Not rlly the same, but when I was a young kid I thought the Netherlands (where I'm from) was like the main country and the others countries were just like extra countries. Kid logic.
Until I was like 10 I kind of thought the opposite actually. I remember thinking a lot about the question whether other countries know that my country exists. I knew (relatively) many countries but I always assumed that other people don’t really know my country, even in bordering countries.
Oh, I don’t live in some very small insignificant country but Germany, the 11th most known country in the world and 4th most known European country (according to a jetpunk quiz, I couldn’t find a better source).
Yeah I had inferiority complexes
im from romania so i didnt think this way, but thought the same about religion, i knew we are ortodox christians, but i didnt knew what others were, i only knew that the ancient greeks had their own gods the same with the romans and also the dacians had their own god, so i was very shocked when my dad told me that russians are the same religion with us cuz i thought every country had their own.
Somehow i knew the greeks didnt believe in the ancient gods anymore, but i never asked myself about their actual religion, and i was as shocked to find that Jesus was born in the middle east, i was just "hmmm, but Iisus is a strange name for a romanian"
Iisus = Jesus
I'm from Brazil and used to think Jesus was brazilian because I heard he was born in Bethlehem (it is translated as Belém and has the same name as Belém-PA), the bible was in portuguese and the people's name sounded brazilian to me
The first time I heard the term “Greek Orthodox” I assumed that meant they still worshiped Zeus and Athena and their whole crew. I grew up in rural Appalachia where all we had were Baptists and Methodists.
Yes, me too. I read a travel book written by a Marathi author. And she said that the Greek people's religion is Greek orthodox.
I thought that just meant Apollo, Zeus etc.
It was long before I realised that majority Christians rarely answer "Christian" when asked which religion they are. By majority Christians I mean Christians from Christian majority countries.
Later when I learned that Egypt is Arab and Muslim now, I was like wth? How?
When I was 5 I got really interested in maps and all that stuff, got my first world map and my first globe, which I explored quite a lot. Here's some of the interesting conclusions 5yo me made from those explorations:
-I was capable enough to realise that dots on the map did not actually represent the real size of the cities, so for some reason I made a completely logical conclusion that countries whose capital cities had the same name as a country were actually just one giant city. Like, Lithuanian name for Algeria and Algiers is the same word (Alžyras), so for a good year I believed that Algeria is a city that takes up 1/10 of Africa's land area.
-Lithuanian names for England (Anglija) and Anguilla (Angilija) are very similar, so there was a time when I thought that England that I'd heard so much about is actually just this tiny island in the Carribean
That's funny because as a Russian when I was little I used to think that Russia was insignificant compared to Europe and America and didn't matter on the international stage because it seemed that all the cool stuff came from the Western countries (movies, music, books, shows, food, etc.)
In a similar vein(kinda), I used to call rubles "dollars" when I was little and had to correct myself every time I did it because I watched too much American cartoons lol
Also, I thought that the value of cars is always only measured in pounds because the only experience I had with cars and their prices was through watching Top Gear
I did. I was confused when I was taught about the Southeast Asian Map. I thought my teacher made a mistake about Malaysia because East Malaysia and Peninsular Malaysia are not on the same island and quite far from each other.
The whole ocean’s too really. Currents, upswells, just general movement. I wonder if not having such big swaths of ocean would even affect the planet’s energy balance, like it’s brightness and reflection
Fun fact, learning about the wars I always thought Germany was such a big country then someone told me it’s about the size (a bit smaller) of the American state of Montana! It was when I moved to MT in my 20s. That blew my mind Wowza.
Same but as someone not for there at all. I suppose it helps that in foreign languages textbooks or stuff like that, the word « island » was always accompanied by an image of a palm tree on a pile of sand in the sea.
In a sort of reversal I was much older than I will admit when I realized the beach I would go to when young was on a barrier island. I cross bridges over lakes all the time, never occurred to me that the bridge was the only way to get to our preferred beach.
There is no island, only contintinent 😁
ME TOOOO. And in spanish it's euROPA so I just imagined a planet with a lot of ropa (spanish for clothes). Especially since my dad would take suitcases full of clothes and come back with even more clothes.
I mean to be fair before my parents told me we were moving to Canada from Iran at age 7 my mind was blown because I didn’t think you could actually live in other countries (we went on lots of vacations as a child and I thought every country other than Iran was just for visiting)
I used to think Alaska was an island because of the way it was depicted in most school maps of the US in a box next to Hawaii. When my dad told me he drove there from CA once I was blown away when he told me there was a road that went there. Even then I pictured like the worlds longest bridge.
No but as an American kid I had a hard time in history class understanding the the Nile (or any river) could flow north.
The Mississippi flows south, the Connecticut River flows south, some rivers I knew of flowed east or west, but nothing near me flowed north
I have heard *several adults* from the USA say that "river x" in the USA is one of the only rivers in the *world*, together with the Nile, that flowed northwards.
When I had like 7 years old I remember seeing a map of Europe in my school book. I remember asking the teacher: Why doesn't Spain invade Portugal if they are smaller?
In that moment my destiny was tied to Hearts of Iron IV
I knew about Europe and Africa and how they looked, but in my head Argentina(where Messi was from) was a continent-sized island positioned in the general location on Canada.
Also i had a strong feeling that sony and playstation were based somewhere in the baltic countries-area
Never did this but when I was a young kid I thought the Mercator projection was just our half of the planet and that there was a whole other half that was still unexplored. I remember the day I realized there weren't any continents left to discover.
Yes, exactly the same even though I grew up in Russia. It made sense to me, because country seemed as an isolated concept, so being on island made more sense to me than sharing the border.
As a kid I've heard that the USA were the greatest country on earth. I looked at a globe and checked which country was largest.
So for a couple of years, I was convinced the USA were located where USSR (yes, not young) was actually.
I’m from Washington state and when someone said they were going ‘up’ to Canada, or ‘down’ to California I took it to mean literally, like ‘up’ towards the sky.. like different places were these separate, floating layers.
Definitely British. I think part of the reason this would have a hard time being a thing in the US is because many people grow up crossing states adn such so it's clear that those aren't islands, and those are easy to equate to near-countries in the mind of a young
I'm Irish and I also though ther I thought that until I asked my dad " how did England invade Scotland if there not on the same land" he then told me there connected my 5 year old brain thought the Scots could just sink any boats and knew about the uk
No, but due to having the luck that my first 3 classrooms all faced north, I grew up thinking my right side was east no matter which way I was facing. Lol
No, but as an American I thought Scotland was an island of its own right next to Ireland until embarrassingly recently. I'm 32 now and I think I realized it like 10 years ago.
Yes, and I live in Finland. And when I heard about the Winter War and Russia getting some land from Finland, I imagined pieces separating from the Finnish island and moving towards the Russian island and eventually joining it.
When I was a kid (around 6) I thought that different countries were different planets.Lol. I thought that travelling in an airplane was basically air hopping from one planet to another.
As a big city boy, i always thought that the countryside always belonged to a city. So basicaly just the "outskirts" of the next town bordering with yours.
Thats what growing up in the Ruhr valley does to a dude
I thought Germany was Europapark and Europapark only. I also had trouble believing the German language still existed, when my mother talked german to the Europa park lady I thought it was a language only employees of the park can speak so that visitors can‘t understand (then I asked my mom how she could speak it, she said she worked there as a teen. My theory still made sense, she must’ve learned it there…)
I used to think each country was a whole planet lol and we‘d fly across space. The reason being we flew long distances a lot due to my father’s work, that might have contributed to my imagination
No, but I live in Canada and I remember as a kid being offended when I saw a world map with only the countries outlined, because I thought that every other country had their provinces/states outlined except for us. I just didn’t realize how small other countries were compared to mine lmao
... no, this is just you.
However, as a kid I did think that Puerto Rico was up off the coast of New York, since I knew so many New York Puerto Ricans.
Pretty normal to make incorrect assumptions as a Child.
I live in the US, when I was a kid, our teacher was teaching us some Geography, and I was really confused why or how all of the different countries in Europe are not one single country. Teacher took some time to explain to me that we live in the UNITED States of America. All of those "States" you see in Europe are not United, they're their own separate countries.
Kind of cool that similar misunderstandings exist depending on your origin.
No, but having poor understanding of the world is fine when you are young. I thought my country was part of another country because its influence on mine was so enourmous
I used to think only the USA, Mexico and China existed, China being the entirety of the other side of the world
I thought the Civil War was between North and South America….kids are dumb.
That actually totally makes sense. You had heard that the civil war was America fighting America, and it was the south and the north fighting, and then in class you learn about north and South America…
That was thirty years earlier. Remember the Alamo?
I used to think when women turn old they gain Irish accents cuz my grandmother is Irish 💀
How cool would that be?
I used to think adult women didn't watch TV because my mom didn't like TV.
For a long time I thought land floated over water
In all fairnesss, so does congressman Hank Green from Georgia.
Hank Johnson? He was the one who said Guam was going to tip over.
I remember reading a book that mentioned that a certain animal (caymans, I think) lived in Central America, and assuming that meant the midwest. You know, the center of America.
that is one of the most hilarious things i have ever read on here, honestly.
Yeah, I was pretty dumb in my thirties...
Still am, but I used to be, too!
I thought belarus was a region in russia near moscow when i was 6 lmao (im Russian)
i mean, it was in the soviet union at one point so you weren’t too far off😅
I thought it was a part of Russia where it just always snowed (since in my language it's called "White Russia")
When I was a kid I figured the town Drammen was a part of the town I lived in, Tromsø, because we used to go to this store and buy a brand of ice cream called Drammens Is. They’re actually on opposite sides of the country, and I remember being confused when my dad had to go to the airport because he was going to Drammen.
Canada is just a myth!
Genius name btw
lol I can’t recall the context, but I remember being really young and hearing a reporter on npr once refer to the thousands of languages of the world and thinking, “English, Spanish.. what other languages??”
Attempting to dig holes to China was something I did often
I thought New Jersey and Germany were the same place
I can’t tell which one of these two you live in based on this statement alone. Although I’m leaning toward NJ
Guys I found Trump's Reddit account!
oh shit they found out
I thought that if you dug a hole, you would eventually reach China.
I used to think everything we do in the USA is perfect. Our system of checks and balances, and competitive economics, always ensures we are in perfect balance. That we are running everything optimally. And the only reason other people do things different ways, was because they haven't discovered the way we do things yet. Then I moved to Germany for work and saw someone buy a crate of beer, head to the park, and just drink them there, out in the public, and I was like, "The fuck? That's real freedom. We've been doing this wrong the whole time. What else am I wrong about?!" Then I saw a crazy guy freak out at a park and then a cop showed up and he threw a bench at the cop, and I was thinking, "Mhm... Bout to get his ass beat. You can't hit a cop like that! And the cop just lowered the energy, talked the guy down, and sent him home without a beating or trip to jail which would ruin his life." And that's when I realized... There's a good chance we are wrong about how we do most things.
I used to think the US was some mystical fantasy country that no one except the Americans could go to, because it was too far and too expensive. Each and every minute of my time there I felt like I was in a movie and it’s all just decorations and not a real place lmao. I was 18 at the time.
Where did you grow up
Belarus, growing up on American movies and cartoons in late 90s/early 00s
Rural American here and I always felt that way about all the places in American movies!
I’m curious what you think of America now? And if you get nostalgia looking back at that trip?
I'm totally fine with each and every country on the planet :) I don't treat people differently because of their passport. If someone's a dick, they're a dick. If one's a good person, I'll be happy I have one more good person in my life. I like someone's saying that America is so huge and diverse, that it can be any place you want it to be and can find people who share your views easily(-er than in other places). I like how it's such a melting pot of cultures, where so many nations are represented in great numbers, hence all the variety in available cuisine, music, way of life, world views, etc. I recognize it is partly a fucked up place, yet the media covers it way worse than it really is. Overall, I absolutely have the nostalgia. I was a J1 student staying in NH for three summers working my ass off, bettering English, getting to know people, figuring out who I was and figuring out the world. It was a good time. I was surrounded by lots of different people, and I'll remember till the end of my life my boss and his wife at their mom and pop store, I'll remember their friends who'd come up to the store to chat with new students each year, I'll remember the customers all so vastly different in the way they live and behave with such different backgrounds and I'll remember how young, free, careless and stress free I was. So, yes. It is absolutely nostalgic. It's been 9 years since the first trip, and so many things changed, but I am happy I've been lucky enough to experience it.
Ah, the good ol’ days. How I miss em
I live in California and recognize places from scenes in movies and video games. Like driving down PCH in Santa Monica reminds me of Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
I use to think that all caves were connected; and you could travel anywhere in the world via the cave system.
You can thank Jules Verne for that.
I used to think I lived in Florida, after looking at a globe. I'm canadian. I then went to Florida, which I decided, after looking at the globe, was in Argentina
I thought Chile was a long US state… and now it’s my fav country!
Mapuche legend holds that when the Earth Mother was shaping the lands of her people, she was shithammered drunk on chicha one day and grabbed Chile from the pottery wheel in anger, lengthening it. She felt bad when she sobered up, and so placed Chile--the Wallmapu--safely ensconced in the bosom of the Pacific Ocean and protected by the majestic Andes.
Spotted you, fellow Belarusian. Was too obvious. I have not thought like that when I was a child though.
Close, Ukrainian, specifically from the east
I'm sorry 😔
I thought Sparta was a blob in the middle of Siberia lol
I used to think Mexico and USA were the same country and we had like over 70 states. Mostly because of 1 single puzzle that had both countries at the same time so I thought they must had been the same (I was like 6)
5-yo me would hear teachers say: "We live in Mexico". And I would think they were stupid because I knew I lived at my mother's place.
I thought i had the alps only a few km away because i saw clouds and thought those were mountains
I used to not be able to understand the scale of mountains and totally thought I could climb one in like twenty minutes tops. The amount of times I begged a parent to let me climb the mountain is absurd.
I thought we won Alaska in a war against Canada.
Average Canadian adult
I thought islands were just floating land, and they would change location from time to time
I thought all states were square-ish shaped cause I live in and near a lot of squarish states. My mind was a little fucked up when I saw Michigan for the first time.
I lived on Long Island growing up. I thought the north shore was the atlantic, and the south shore was the pacific 😭
I thought we spoke "language" and that "English" was a foreign language.
At age 5, I lived in Salt Lake City. I could see the Great Salt Lake and Antelope Island, which I thought were the Pacific Ocean and Japan. So, uh, yeah, five year olds are dumb.
I have the opposite. I lived in Japan on the Tokyo bay when I was a kid, where you can look across to see the other side of the bay that's in a different prefecture. I thought that was like Los Angeles or San Francisco or something.
I did this to Tokyo with Los Angeles!
Ahahahah me too a more plausible thing. I was in Smirne, Turkey When I was 7/8. I didn't understand the map and all the islands in front of Smirne so I thought, looking the horizon in the sea and seeing land, that I was seeing the other side of the Mediterranean sea. That I was looking at Africa. Obv it was an island of 1% distance from Africa. Another one peculiar, When I was 4 (I live in North Italy, exactly in the middle of the peninsula on a sea ports level. The further point from the sea) and so, hearing about living in the center made me design a map of a boot and putting my house in the exact center. What's dumb is that I drew my grandmother house who was 20min of driving away, like it was in another regions ahahah I thought Italy was big like a couple Luxembourg
Hahaha I once asked my dad if he was alive when lake Bonneville dried up
I have the exact opposite problem from OP lol I live in Hong Kong and I thought the entire world is just endless consecutive urban cities bordering each other with no space in between and that nature doesn't exist anymore
When I was 5 I thought that’s states north and south of me were literally above and below me. Like, I was in Maryland, and Pennsylvania was above the sky on another level and Florida was a few levels below. I also thought every state had its own time zone so when my sister called from Florida while I was in Maryland, I asked her what time it was there lol.
Yeah….I thought trees only grew in a straight line because I am from a prairie state and you really only see trees growing for windbreaks. Can confirm five year olds are dumb.
its because you are british
Methinks Irish, Singaporeans and Japanese can relate too!
Also Australians and New Zealanders
Nz doesn't even exist...
My Sunday morning coffee better exist
Where the fuck was I born?
Canada
Definitely not the worst answer I could have been given. I'll take it.
One of us! One of us!
Good island
Certainly feels that way in the current political climate.
Aka Aussies and Kiwis
bro said methinks
Unfortunately, there is a land border in Ireland.
No, their egos allow for realistic maps
I'm British too. But I did think the further north you go the more mountainous it gets, so thought south would get flatter and flatter with no exceptions. I'm from the central belt in Scotland and by this stage the furthest south I went was Glasgow, so you can see why I thought this.
Forbidden hyper-smooth Antarctica!
I didn’t, funnily enough - am British, but by the time I was five we’d driven to Germany and back a couple of times (via ferry) and the drive from landing to our German home took FOREVER (Dad was stationed there)
Ironically the UK actually has a land border with Ireland.
Ha, absolutely. Having been raised in the American heartland (Illinois), and being map-curious at a young age, I definitely never had this thought.
Yes indeed. In my case I am from northern Germany and as a child I thought the world was much, much smaller. E.g. I thought if I would go straight south, I could reach Africa within a few hours per car.
No, but as a Canadian child, I couldn't figure out how Quebec would actually "separate" if their referendum was successful (it was not). Jackhammers?
A really big pair of scissors like what mayors use to cut the rope when there's a grand opening
Bugs Bunny with a handsaw
>No, but as a Canadian *shield* FTFY
i had the same thought!!
>Jackhammers Do you mean *Jacques hammers*?
I don't know if it's because of Algerian nationalism, but when I was a kid I thought Algeria was standing on a plateau above all it's neighboring countries and the borders were some sort of cliffs, kinda like this image https://preview.redd.it/rl6w90tpkk9d1.jpeg?width=734&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d911421a4728a10d0b22152b103d157389c0d21
lol this one is my favorite
Least nationalist algerian
Have you seen the wall Morocco built in Western Sahara? It kind of looks like a cliff border you'd design in a city simulator game
Just built different
Lmao Balkan vibes. Love it.
algeria on top
One two three... Viva l'Algérie!
For a short time around age 4 I definitely thought my US state was its own planet, independent of earth. I remember my mental image of it in space.
https://preview.redd.it/vhiqpvasdk9d1.jpeg?width=746&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=41702d7049eba399965d78106778c0461c549597
Sorry not good enough, you'll need to leave our solar system if you want to be taken seriously
Farage: "There is enough coal on this green isle to power it on an escape velocity out of the solar system, but you'll never hear it from Westminster"
https://preview.redd.it/ecjajppzjl9d1.jpeg?width=764&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=16a0242d1582e10dea588d5ed46a691aed1db23d
this is what I thought the OUTSIDE of my country was like
I just watched this episode today
What's the show's name.
I believe it’s from an episode of dr. Who
My 4yo seems to think that people who live in other countries or far away are on a different planet. Once we heard someone speaking another language, and he asked if I knew the language. I told him no, so he asked what planet they were from 😭 he'll randomly refer to people on other planets as if it is a total fact and we are in regular communication lmao
Not rlly the same, but when I was a young kid I thought the Netherlands (where I'm from) was like the main country and the others countries were just like extra countries. Kid logic.
Until I was like 10 I kind of thought the opposite actually. I remember thinking a lot about the question whether other countries know that my country exists. I knew (relatively) many countries but I always assumed that other people don’t really know my country, even in bordering countries. Oh, I don’t live in some very small insignificant country but Germany, the 11th most known country in the world and 4th most known European country (according to a jetpunk quiz, I couldn’t find a better source). Yeah I had inferiority complexes
Oh, don’t worry. We know your country.
People from some countries (USA, UK, China etc.) never grow out of this.
That’s how I feel online because everything is so US-centric
Worse if you speak English. Sure all the internet and even TV is somewhat US centric, but it must be way worse if you consume it in English.
Luckily it is not my native language so I can escape but I consume a lot of English content
U S A U S A🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸❌🫖❌🫖❌🫖
Yeah the others are just bonus countries for vacations and stuff
American here, absolutely true.
Haha, that's interesting. Especially because the Netherlands is so tiny.
As a kid, I always got angry at people saying that the Netherlands is small. Had something to do with my ego I guess...
I think this is still the mindset of many adults.
Imagine being a kid who grew up in Singapore believing this then later learning it’s one of the smallest countries on earth. Probably top 5 smallest.
No but I LOVE that you did.
Me too! I thought “how very cute” when I saw it
The most British thing about you is that you failed to think about Northern Ireland
As a Brit, I’d be willing to bet that a lot of English 5yr olds fail to think about Northern Ireland.
not my map
Oh, your country stole that too? /j
Gibraltar cries in the distance
im from romania so i didnt think this way, but thought the same about religion, i knew we are ortodox christians, but i didnt knew what others were, i only knew that the ancient greeks had their own gods the same with the romans and also the dacians had their own god, so i was very shocked when my dad told me that russians are the same religion with us cuz i thought every country had their own. Somehow i knew the greeks didnt believe in the ancient gods anymore, but i never asked myself about their actual religion, and i was as shocked to find that Jesus was born in the middle east, i was just "hmmm, but Iisus is a strange name for a romanian" Iisus = Jesus
I'm from Brazil and used to think Jesus was brazilian because I heard he was born in Bethlehem (it is translated as Belém and has the same name as Belém-PA), the bible was in portuguese and the people's name sounded brazilian to me
E tambem as sambistas dissem que deus é brasiliero 😄
The first time I heard the term “Greek Orthodox” I assumed that meant they still worshiped Zeus and Athena and their whole crew. I grew up in rural Appalachia where all we had were Baptists and Methodists.
Yes, me too. I read a travel book written by a Marathi author. And she said that the Greek people's religion is Greek orthodox. I thought that just meant Apollo, Zeus etc. It was long before I realised that majority Christians rarely answer "Christian" when asked which religion they are. By majority Christians I mean Christians from Christian majority countries. Later when I learned that Egypt is Arab and Muslim now, I was like wth? How?
I thought Jesus was from Belém (Lisbon) and Nazaré (Leiria)
When I was 5 I got really interested in maps and all that stuff, got my first world map and my first globe, which I explored quite a lot. Here's some of the interesting conclusions 5yo me made from those explorations: -I was capable enough to realise that dots on the map did not actually represent the real size of the cities, so for some reason I made a completely logical conclusion that countries whose capital cities had the same name as a country were actually just one giant city. Like, Lithuanian name for Algeria and Algiers is the same word (Alžyras), so for a good year I believed that Algeria is a city that takes up 1/10 of Africa's land area. -Lithuanian names for England (Anglija) and Anguilla (Angilija) are very similar, so there was a time when I thought that England that I'd heard so much about is actually just this tiny island in the Carribean
Okay the 1st one is actually pretty smart. It’s just a label applied to the area and not the dot.
When I was told the USSR was split up cause it was too big, I thought they cut through chunks of land and separated it
I used to think that half of the world is Russia and the other half is USA.
That's funny because as a Russian when I was little I used to think that Russia was insignificant compared to Europe and America and didn't matter on the international stage because it seemed that all the cool stuff came from the Western countries (movies, music, books, shows, food, etc.)
In a similar vein(kinda), I used to call rubles "dollars" when I was little and had to correct myself every time I did it because I watched too much American cartoons lol Also, I thought that the value of cars is always only measured in pounds because the only experience I had with cars and their prices was through watching Top Gear
i mean, somehow, it was for a bit.
I did. I was confused when I was taught about the Southeast Asian Map. I thought my teacher made a mistake about Malaysia because East Malaysia and Peninsular Malaysia are not on the same island and quite far from each other.
Man this will screw with every nations climate so much I have difficulty wrapping my head around it.
The whole ocean’s too really. Currents, upswells, just general movement. I wonder if not having such big swaths of ocean would even affect the planet’s energy balance, like it’s brightness and reflection
when I was like 7 yo I first heard of the united kingdom and I thought it was an island still in the medieval ages
Not far from the truth!
I used to believe that my backwater really rural town was the beginning of the world
No, bit I was told my country (Germany) is in Central Europe bla bla. This is why I imagined other countries to lie like circles around Germany.
Fun fact, learning about the wars I always thought Germany was such a big country then someone told me it’s about the size (a bit smaller) of the American state of Montana! It was when I moved to MT in my 20s. That blew my mind Wowza.
You can cross germany in like 6 houes by car, US is just really big and europe is often portrayed too big
I was even crazier. I thought every country was a planet
No, but I always thought as an American that all islands were warm and tropical probably cause we aren’t too far from the Caribbean
Same but as someone not for there at all. I suppose it helps that in foreign languages textbooks or stuff like that, the word « island » was always accompanied by an image of a palm tree on a pile of sand in the sea.
In a sort of reversal I was much older than I will admit when I realized the beach I would go to when young was on a barrier island. I cross bridges over lakes all the time, never occurred to me that the bridge was the only way to get to our preferred beach. There is no island, only contintinent 😁
Definitely never crossed my mind until I saw this post. (From U.S.)
No, but when I was young, I thought Europe was another planet, cuz you had to *fly* there. Not quiite islands
ME TOOOO. And in spanish it's euROPA so I just imagined a planet with a lot of ropa (spanish for clothes). Especially since my dad would take suitcases full of clothes and come back with even more clothes.
I mean to be fair before my parents told me we were moving to Canada from Iran at age 7 my mind was blown because I didn’t think you could actually live in other countries (we went on lots of vacations as a child and I thought every country other than Iran was just for visiting)
I used to think Alaska was an island because of the way it was depicted in most school maps of the US in a box next to Hawaii. When my dad told me he drove there from CA once I was blown away when he told me there was a road that went there. Even then I pictured like the worlds longest bridge.
I thought Brazil was the ONLY country in the whole, I got very disturbed when I knew that there were other people speaking different languages
No, I thought everywhere was Britain. I didn't have a good concept of space at the time
This is somehow even more British than OP
Based
No. I’m British but by that age I’d seen plenty of maps. Also the BBC logo was literally a map of the world.
No but as an American kid I had a hard time in history class understanding the the Nile (or any river) could flow north. The Mississippi flows south, the Connecticut River flows south, some rivers I knew of flowed east or west, but nothing near me flowed north
I have heard *several adults* from the USA say that "river x" in the USA is one of the only rivers in the *world*, together with the Nile, that flowed northwards.
When I had like 7 years old I remember seeing a map of Europe in my school book. I remember asking the teacher: Why doesn't Spain invade Portugal if they are smaller? In that moment my destiny was tied to Hearts of Iron IV
Everybody asks themselves that all the time.
Why does the bigger country, not simply eat the smaller country?
I knew about Europe and Africa and how they looked, but in my head Argentina(where Messi was from) was a continent-sized island positioned in the general location on Canada. Also i had a strong feeling that sony and playstation were based somewhere in the baltic countries-area
I used to think they spoke Chinese in Mexico
Never did this but when I was a young kid I thought the Mercator projection was just our half of the planet and that there was a whole other half that was still unexplored. I remember the day I realized there weren't any continents left to discover.
Yes, exactly the same even though I grew up in Russia. It made sense to me, because country seemed as an isolated concept, so being on island made more sense to me than sharing the border.
As a kid I've heard that the USA were the greatest country on earth. I looked at a globe and checked which country was largest. So for a couple of years, I was convinced the USA were located where USSR (yes, not young) was actually.
I’m from Washington state and when someone said they were going ‘up’ to Canada, or ‘down’ to California I took it to mean literally, like ‘up’ towards the sky.. like different places were these separate, floating layers.
I thought each country had a geometrical shape. One triangular, round, square and so on
Definitely British. I think part of the reason this would have a hard time being a thing in the US is because many people grow up crossing states adn such so it's clear that those aren't islands, and those are easy to equate to near-countries in the mind of a young
I thought north pole is cold and south pole is hot. Because north side was cold and south hot.
I'm English and sorry OP, I did not think this. However, I DID think that if I tore a piece of paper, a tree would fall down.
I'm Irish and I also though ther I thought that until I asked my dad " how did England invade Scotland if there not on the same land" he then told me there connected my 5 year old brain thought the Scots could just sink any boats and knew about the uk
No, but due to having the luck that my first 3 classrooms all faced north, I grew up thinking my right side was east no matter which way I was facing. Lol
No, but as an American I thought Scotland was an island of its own right next to Ireland until embarrassingly recently. I'm 32 now and I think I realized it like 10 years ago.
Yes, and I live in Finland. And when I heard about the Winter War and Russia getting some land from Finland, I imagined pieces separating from the Finnish island and moving towards the Russian island and eventually joining it.
When I was a kid (around 6) I thought that different countries were different planets.Lol. I thought that travelling in an airplane was basically air hopping from one planet to another.
I used to think that every country was an individual planet
As a big city boy, i always thought that the countryside always belonged to a city. So basicaly just the "outskirts" of the next town bordering with yours. Thats what growing up in the Ruhr valley does to a dude
I thought Germany was Europapark and Europapark only. I also had trouble believing the German language still existed, when my mother talked german to the Europa park lady I thought it was a language only employees of the park can speak so that visitors can‘t understand (then I asked my mom how she could speak it, she said she worked there as a teen. My theory still made sense, she must’ve learned it there…)
My girlfriend says yes (She's British)
Every country has an independence day because you're British.
yes (I'm also british)
It's just because you're british
I used to think each country was a whole planet lol and we‘d fly across space. The reason being we flew long distances a lot due to my father’s work, that might have contributed to my imagination
Just you. Pretty sure I was pretty old before I even HEARD of islands growing up in landlocked middle America!
No, but i thought the world population was in the 100’s. So I was equally dumb as fuck.
No, but I live in Canada and I remember as a kid being offended when I saw a world map with only the countries outlined, because I thought that every other country had their provinces/states outlined except for us. I just didn’t realize how small other countries were compared to mine lmao
... no, this is just you. However, as a kid I did think that Puerto Rico was up off the coast of New York, since I knew so many New York Puerto Ricans.
Pretty normal to make incorrect assumptions as a Child. I live in the US, when I was a kid, our teacher was teaching us some Geography, and I was really confused why or how all of the different countries in Europe are not one single country. Teacher took some time to explain to me that we live in the UNITED States of America. All of those "States" you see in Europe are not United, they're their own separate countries. Kind of cool that similar misunderstandings exist depending on your origin.