Almost Canadian

There you go, a person that has lived in England for some time has no idea that lots of freight is transported by train; I do accept that Shard isn't a lawyer

Shard

Not quite "no idea" more a case of not seen any. But as you say UK does have decent rail frieight operations and from what I have just read, it seems to be a buoyant sector. Current freight market share is about 11%. Finally, compliment accepted.

Jericho79

A few months ago, we have a student from U of Alberta (may have been BC, cant remember now), selling educational books for kids.
Upon hearing my accent, she asked where I was from etc, but then asked if the UK was in Europe. This was a university student.... selling educational material for children. My mind was boggled.

xxdb

I've had *all sorts* of stupid things said to me that demonstrate that Canucks are equally as ignorant as Yanks about other countries. That said, when back home I've also heard some seriously ignorant things said by people who I would expect to know better.

xxdb

[QUOTE=caretaker;11549654] Good one. Maybe hanging out here is rubbing off on you.

xxdb

Aren't they a bit heavy for that?

scrubbedexpat091

Do they teach geography in school in Canada? Just curious, never went to school here. In the 80's and 90's when I was in school in California, they dumped geography and so I never learned it in school. I am not 100% in where what is, but I have a pretty good idea of what region of the world something is in.

xxdb

Good point. I've never heard of my two boys doing a class called "geography" or "history". They do something called "social studies" instead. That said, though they taught Geography in the UK when I was a kid, you had to actually *pay attention* to learn anything.

Shirtback

I can't off-hand think of the class name, but yeah, geography seemed to get lumped with history & what I would call "general" studies when my lot were at school here.

Back in the Dark Ages when I did O level geog. at school in England, an inordinate amount of the course was about Canada... I still retain odd bits of information (West coast fishing industry, trains, & bits of geology??!!??) which surface & are useful from time to time . I dropped A level after a particularly horrendous week in Wales on a field trip.

caretaker

They used to teach us a lot about other countries in Social Studies back in the stone age, geography, industry, agriculture, why to this very day I know that they mine tin in Bolivia and the capital of New Zealand is Wellington. My parent's huge collection of National Geographic magazines from the 20's onward and a 4" thick bound collection of Chums from the turn of the century through the 20's were just as educational though. We had to learn all the states in the union and their capitals which didn't seem fair as even if they cared the Americans would have it much easier memorising our provinces.

BristolUK

Not the Light Rail ones

BristolUK

Regardless of learning geography at school - or not - wasn't it interesting just to randomly turn over the pages in an atlas and see where places were?

I still do it now, except mostly on line instead.

Juggernaut1064

Most rail freight in the UK moves at night so as not to interfere with faster or high speed passenger trains. I lived within 50 feet of a main line and i could set my watch by the time a bulk train came through every night, the semi bungalow i owned would rock as it went by lol Although after a while you just sleep through it.
I did Geography at school but a new fancy class just started called Social Studies lol so i did both for a while, I don't use an atlas now i prefer Google Earth it works much better and Google Mars too.

caretaker

I used to have a watch like that.

Juggernaut1064

Yep,