Living in the Black Forest is sometimes fun.

First of all people admire the “mountains”. While yes, the Black Forest is not quite flat and especially in winter it is often underestimated (we have avalanches and occasionally people die in them) it’s not like they are that step and high. At least from my perspective - I grew up in the actual alps. It would be totally different If I grew up in the Netherlands. (And again: The nature is nice and we have wild wolves, Lynx and s few other rare animals here)

The other thing people totally get excited about is “Black forest cake”. But… It has nothing to do with the Forest… it’s just a reference to its looks and was invented hundreds of kilometres away. While you can get a decent one here by now, it’s still funny.

So…what is the most original thing you can get here? It’s the thing the tourists think that they are all produced overseas. The cuckoo clock. Not kidding, while a shitload of them are cheap china trash, you can actually get nice ones for a reasonable price that were still built here. (And some really really nice ones that look modern and stylish as well. I need one of those one day,but they are ridiculously expensive)

Other than that: Old buildings. My last apartment had some walls that were built at a time Australia wasn’t discovered by Europeans yet. My kids friend lives in a house that is 800 years old - and always belonged to the same family. The hill the local kids go tobogganing in winter very likely was already used in that capacity 2500 years ago as some archeological sites have shown.

Even my current house is 80 years old and that sometimes sounds absolutely ridiculous to friends overseas.

Fireflys.

You go to some tiny, dying town and it has 700 years of history, often 1000+ years of proof of habitation before that and a majestic church that is a work of art on its own.

I was born and raised in New Hampshire. The leaves turning in autumn is just another part of the season for us like pumpkins, apple cider donuts, and haunted hayrides. People from other parts of the US or even other countries, though, treat it like its a wonder of the world.

In Oxford, it’s “normal” to see students walking around in sub-fusc (formal academic dress) at certain times of year. It’s not just for matriculation and graduation, you have to do all of your exams in it, too. Tourists seem to love it, though. Some will ask random students for photographs. Some won’t bother asking.

When I was in grad school, a French post doc saw one of the pine cones ( some get around the size of your head). She wanted to keep it to prove that “ everything is bigger in America “

Poutine is lazy junk food and there’s nothing impressive about a slop pile of gravy, curds, and fries.

I live in the Gulf Islands of BC Canada. So. Many. Tourists. I don’t leave my house on the weekends in the summer. We have fabulous beaches though, and it really is lovely. I moved so much as a kid so I’ve always been like oh this is a cool place, I could move here whenever I travel. This is the first time in my life when I’m happy to be going home. Vancouver island is amazing.

The sea

My school was in a village that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site so in the morning there’d be coachloads of Japanese and American tourists unloading and getting their cameras out and I was just trying to not be late for registration.

I’m in the UK and it’s totally normal here to have kids sitting on harbour walls catching crabs (crabbing) at any seaside town. I don’t give it a second thought but it seems to fascinate foreign tourists.

In the US and one that I haven’t seen others mention yet is the hummingbirds

In Montreal, it’s pretty typical to see groundhogs and raccoons. It was a fairly regular phenomena for me to walk through St-Helen Island and see tourists that stopped to take pictures of groundhogs.

The Derby. So glad I moved out of Louisville, KY as soon as I graduated high school.

our grocery stores