Not that crazy but I'd never seen anything like it before.
Over 15 years ago, I was standing in a very long line at St. Basil's in Moscow. A small pack of tourists (half a dozen or so) started to "sneak" their way into cutting in line. About 30 French people in a tour group immediately started scolding them in loud unison. They shamed them into taking their place at the end of the line. It was such an automatic and united scolding. Highly entertaining.
A fellow traveler, far more experienced than I am, said that the French are known for doing that sort of thing.
Used to work for a few ski resorts and still live in town so I've got plenty:
*Skiing into the pit of a ski lift (the area right after the chairs leave the loading station that's roped off for a reason) face first into a thankfully empty chair and asking me "why didn't it stop?". Well chief, it did stop, about 20 feet after I pressed the button, you were within 20 feet.
*Grown man cradling his skis sideways in his arms like a child attempting to board a gondola cabin and clotheslining himself.
*Grown men pushing children out of the way to cut in line.
*Jumping off chairs just before the unload station.
*Father attempting to hit his own children in a tube well after I told him they go like 30mph and can fuck people up.
*Walking along the pavement still wearing skis.
*Dropping the comfort bar on a passing chair, resulting in the people who were about to sit in said chair to get bowled over into the pit. I just about lost any semblance of professionalism on that one...
*Underaged girl riding the bungee trampoline asked me if putting the harnesses on guests turned me on. Resulting in me dropping the harness and telling one of the female coworkers that had just been playing with their phones and talking amongst themselves that the harnesses were their fucking job now.
*Lift I was on stopped for awhile because a guy carrying his skis over his shoulder was absentmindedly decking people in the face which resulted in a fistfight the bottom operator had to break up.
I can keep going for a while.
For a while I worked at a theme park in central Florida. Yeah, it's that one. Some of the guests went wild.
One time I was walking through a guest area on my way to the break room when a dude pushing a stroller ran into me without looking. Apologies on both sides and then the dude tried to hand me something. I put my hands behind my back as a kind of "no thanks," we're not really supposed to take things from guests. I looked down and it was a used diaper. He thought he could just hand a park employee his child's shit filled Pampers and that we'd take care of it. There was a trash can literally right behind him, but thinking on it later where did he change the diaper? There's trash cans in the bathrooms and they all have changing stations... did he just change the kid outside? Is that a thing parents do?
Another time I was helping the transportation department during a park closure. Up on the monorail platform I was shoulder to shoulder with like a thousand people. A train arrives, the doors and gates open, and people start boarding. A woman who'd been standing near me stopped at the doors, turned to face me, poked her finger into my chest and shouted "YOU RUINED OUR VACATION!" She stared daggers into my soul as she walked backwards like a Bond villain into the car and continued staring me down as the doors closed and the train left the station. I have no clue who this was or what I had done.
Finally, I had to break up a fight where grown ass adults were yelling at each other and had started spitting on each other's children (like WTF). No idea who started it or even if the two groups knew each other, but shit was looking to come to blows and the security people weren't quite there yet. Another park employee and I stepped up between them with a "come on folks" and "this is a place for families." Both of us were big guys so we made a wall between them, I'm 6'2 and was about 280lbs at the time (128cm [typo edit: 182 lol] and almost 130 kgs [edit for my fellow Americans: that's about one refrigerator in height and around weight of a Shetland pony]). Saw the parents faces drop from anger to embarrassment immediately realizing how dumb they were being when security jogged up and a manager on a Segway rolled in.
The most magical place in central Florida really brings out the strange in some folks.
A big group of Chinese tourists wanted to be first on a boat for some reason so they all just started shoving everyone out of the way, including little old ladies and children. It was really shocking behavior, like suddenly everyone around them was no longer a person. The boat was huge and had plenty of room for everyone so it wasn't really obvious why they decided to attack people, they didn't really gain anything by being the first aboard.
I was in the Navy and one of my shipmates got so drunk he passed out on a bench in front of the fountain at the Kings Cross intersection in Sydney. So a prostitute told him he was going to get arrested and when he spoke she realized he was American and somehow one thing leading to the other....
She gave him a bj at 7am during the beginning of rush hour traffic. She later took us to a couple private bars that were creepy and she stole his Levi's later after they had sex and she left
[off topic?]
I live in New York City. One of my friends used to teach an art history course at the4 College of Staten Island.
She once told me that she'd had students who'd never travelled the 12 miles to get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. The Met is considered one of the top museums in the world, but going there was too much hassle
Haggle and argue with a street vendor in a 3rd world country. He might've been mildly overcharged but the kind of amount that even I let go as a local.
Plus since there's basically 0 tourism here many just like to give away stuff for free to em.
Many also treat the tourist as a tourist attraction lol. Staring and awkwardly asking for photos and what not.
this.
tl;dr: showed up to hotel a day before their room was ready, wanted to sleep in the lobby, got abusive and violent with the staff when they refused, then accused the police of assault when they were forcibly escorted out after refusing for hours to leave.
this got attention in swedish media first, and only got a response from the ccp after it had gone viral.
A British tourist riding on the worst metro line left her (expensive) phone on the seat and went behind the seat to look at the metro map. Even stayed there while the doors were open and at least me and three more people could have easily snatched it and left. I don't think the subway in the UK is much better so not sure what she was thinking.
We hosted some Japanese tourists a few times when I was younger.
My mom and dad got pretty freaked out when they caught one of the older women (young adult age, from what I remember) going into my brother’s room (~age 7-9) and sitting on his bed and looking at him as he slept. I don’t think she actually did anything but it was super creepy. They ended up kicking her out.
Another one at another time got really upset at us and ended up leaving. I don’t remember specifics, I just remember her screaming at my parents and then leaving. I was pretty young when this happened. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because we lived close to a big US city at the time but not within walking distance. But looking at a map might give you that impression and she may have thought she’d get to do more in that city when she couldn’t.
We hosted quite a few groups and most seemed to enjoy their stay and have a fun time. I remember my brother and I getting quite a few gifts from them, small stuff like toys and treats, and getting to hear a bit about Japan.
Shit on the sidewalk.
Not the craziest thing in this thread but inside a train, arguing loudly on the phone.
It sounded like the tourist was scammed or something.
Switzerland. Taking the very busy cableway down the mountain. People waiting in line to get in. Next stop, I see some people exiting and immediately getting in line again there. Apparently they thought you need to get in line again at every stop. Crazy. Sweet maybe, but crazy.
A family was trying to have a 3-day-old baguette and breaking their teeth on it
I was in the line to get tickets for Leeds Castle in UK. Some guy got off a bus ran past the line to the ticket guy. He started slamming his hands down and yelling "Fish and Chips" over and over again.
The ticket guy wasn't selling any food and wasn't going to sell him a ticket unless he got in line. After about 2 minutes of this he just got back on the bus.
Spend money (waste fuel, and worse: waste precious time) to go to touristic places so they can take the exact same picture/video everyone else has taken, and share it on the exact same social networks everyone else has done. Why not just buy a postcard or repost a photo already shared. Why not, you know, look around and suddenly realize there are many other things worth looking at... things that may not even be that remote from where they live.
For me, that's one of the most extreme demonstration of generalized craziness, if not worse. Or maybe it's just me who's crazy (or worse)?
Edit: added a missing word.
Out fishing with some buddies on a river popular for its springs and people floating on inner tubes.
Except, we were well south of the exit for tubers to be picked up by the shuttle and taken back to the start, and we start hearing a loud group approaching. Eventually they saw us and loudly spoke to each other saying something about "asking the rednecks". When they got closer they did, to the point of saying, "Hey rednecks, where is the exit for tubers? Did we pass it or is it coming up?"
They were probably a 20 minute float past the exit. I told them they had about another 20 minutes to go.
"Thank you rednecks!"
Hide an STI
Attempt to hitchhike across the US. No clue if they made it, but I carried them through Kentucky.
I say this as someone who has successfully hitchhiked the length and breadth of the 48 states, but these folks were not prepared for what they were attempting.
