Ask Lemmy

The way it changed my mental perception of how far apart buildings are. I moved from North Carolina to Massachusetts, and distinctly remember that the first time I went back to visit the city I grew up in, I had a reaction along the lines of "wtf, did like a bomb go off here or something?" upon seeing it, because I'd become used to buildings being taller and closer together and suddenly by contrast the parking lots with scattered short buildings and wide roads reminded me of those pictures you see of cities after a war or disaster, where there'll be a few buildings relatively intact looking surrounded by flattened grey.

Every time I go back there now, I get a really eerie feeling because even though for the most part, the buildings haven't changed at all, the place feels as if they have, like everything has been squashed vertically and stretched horizontally.

I didn't expect the trees to scream at me

Stopped drinking almost entirely, because moving also meant finding new friends (who prefer other activities than drinking).

When I moved from the west coast of Canada to the east coast, I was surprised how different the clouds and the sunrise looked. There are like, a lot more fluffy clouds, and the sunsets are more vivid across the entire sky.

Water bills. Moved from Williamsbrg, VA less than 10 miles down to the next city down, Newport News, and water went from like $30/mo to $100/mo (water+sewer+trash in aparment in both cases). Googling and it's apparently normal. Yeesh.

That I need the same amount of time to the big city.

Distance to the city: 18 km -> 10 km Time to the city by train: 19 min -> 12 min Time to train station: 3 min -> 10 min

When we moved into a new house some years ago, there were only rabbits and no squirrels. The squirrels have since moved in.

It's more like what didn't change that I did expect. The rural midwest is still very hot, very right-wing (and far alt-right), and full of mosquitoes, much like the southern US. In fact, it's predicted the south will see more inches of snow and days of snow than the midwest this year.