In every other place I've lived in or visited (and there's been a few), when you stand at the side of the street with the intention of crossing the road, you wait until there are no cars around. Or you go to a pedestrian crossing so that the cars will stop for you (though this doesn't work in Rome - your best bet when crossing the road there is to just run like a mad thing and hope you make it to the other side of the road alive).
Not in Newfoundland.
Nuh-uh. Here, you can stand at the side of a busy 4 lane highway, and the cars will stop, that's right, totally stop, and then wait for you to cross the road. In town, you probably only need to wait for about 3 or 4 cars to go past before they stop and let you walk across in front of them. I still run, it's just part of my scaredy, I-can't-quite-believe-these-cars-are-stopping-for-me nature.
The first couple of times this happened it totally freaked me out. I even experienced stage fright at having to cross the road in front of people. This has long since passed, and I now get annoyed when the cars don't stop straight away.
That's nice, and it definitely doesn't happen anywhere else that I've been to.
So that's my first 'Thing I love about Newfoundland'. Hopefully it won't be too long until I share my next 'thing' with you.
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