I've been to Canada quite often both for work and pleasure. For work I have spent a few days in Toronto, Ontario, Montreal, Quebec, and London, Ontario. Also for the past 23 years a group of us have been traveling into Northern Ontario's sunset country to go fishing about an hour northwest of Sioux Lookout. Five of us were just there a couple weeks ago.
My experiences in these parts of Canada are varied. The First Nations people we have met around the Lac Seul and lost lake area are very friendly, honest, and welcoming. I had similar experience with people I met in southern Ontario such as in London and Toronto. In Montreal my experience was a little different. The people there seemed less hospitable, not mean or anything like that but just not quite as welcoming and a bit on the stand-offish side, particularly when it came to the French language. An example is that although literally everyone can speak English and even though they knew I was from the US they would often avoid or even refuse to speak English to me unless they absolutely had to. I have also experienced a little animosity between Ontario residents and Quebec residence resulting from this language concern. In Quebec, for example, commercial signs are required to be printed primarily in French with English in smaller print and taking us less space.
I also had to travel to Erkelenz, Germany, which is about 30 miles (50 km) southwest of Düsseldorf, Germany. I was there for about a week. I found the people there to be very friendly and inviting. In fact, I remember when I came back to the states, the US customs seemed very rude to me simply because I missed answering one of the questions on the declarations form. I don't recall exactly what it was that I missed, but it was rather insignificant, so I thought. I remember telling the person how the people in Germany treated me better than my own country folks.
There were a couple things the German people I met that they found very interesting. When they learned that we, my wife and I, owned 87 acres those I spoke to seemed amazed at that. I don't know if owning that much land is rare in Germany or not, but it was unique to those I spoke with. The other thing was firearms ownership and storage. They told me that to own firearms in Germany required keeping them in secured government facilities and when someone wanted to get one of their guns to go hunting or something there was a process of checking it out. The cost for all of this was such that in their words, "It is a rich man's game." The average person couldn't really afford to own firearms and it was very inconvenient for shooting sports because of this.
I also had to spend about 10 days about 100 km south of Seoul, South Korea. I don't recall the exact spelling of the city so I am unable to find it on a map but I recall it was pronounced like Chong Ju City so it could have been Cheongju-Si.
My experience in South Korea was both unique and unnerving. Where I was at, there were very few that could speak English and I could not speak Korean. One thing I can say is that I was never so lonely than I was when I was there and it gave me a good appreciation for someone not being able to speak English here in the US. Not being able to speak the language or even recognize the written language made it very uncomfortable for me to even consider going for a walk for any distance as I could get lost very easily.
The people were very friendly and accommodating to my cultural and language barriers and one day they arranged for a couple guys to take me on a tour of the area. We spent the entire day together with one of them not able to speak English while the other spoke enough English that we could communicate but we had a great time. For lunch he asked me if I wanted American food or Korean food. I told him that I can get American food anytime and since I'm in Korea, I'd like to try Korean food. We went to a restaurant where we took off our shoes upon entering and sat on the floor next to a table that was about 18" high with a grill in the center. Then they decided to have some fun with me. First, they handed me the menu and suggested I order. Of course, the menu was written in Korean, which to me looked like something my 2-year old wrote. We had a good laugh about that. Then they asked if I wanted to use a fork or chop sticks. I asked them if they had advanced into the 20th century or not and they said they still used chop sticks quite regularly so I said, "Chop sticks it is." We had a good laugh as I fumbled around with those for quite a while but eventually, I was able to use them well enough not to starve.
At the time I was there in the late 1990's, my contact and I got on the subject of religion and he told me that about 25% of the population was Christian. I knew very little about South Korea so this was interesting to me.
