Travel quirks, part 3: sculpture, animals, doppelgängers, art and more!

In part one of this series, I showed you weird signs, billboards and writing. In part two, I showcased my gastronomic adventures. Today, in the thrilling conclusion of my travel quirks series, I leave you with all the stuff that didn't fit into the previous two categories. You'll see some sculptures, some animals, some celebrity Doppelgängers, and a bunch of other stuff that made me laugh while traveling.

Sculpture

Memento Park near Budapest, Hungary

I think this statue is supposed to represent a heroic soldier calling people to arms, but, to be honest, the most heroic thing about it is holding that ridiculous pose. It took me a few tries to not fall over so we could get this priceless photo. I also prefer the local interpretation of the statue: a waiter chasing down a customer. "Sir! Wait! You forgot your jacket!"

Animals

While sitting on the main square in Krakow, we saw a strange looking pigeon waddle up to us. As it came closer, we realized that there was a ring of bread stuck around its neck. I'm not sure how it got there, but the pigeon seemed to be unaware of it. In fact, the dumb bird spent most of its time wandering around and frantically searching and fighting for, uh, more bread. It would occasionally walk up to other pigeons and make a face like "hey, seen any bread around here?" The tragic irony, of course, is that if this bird is successful and eats enough to make itself fat... it'll suffocate.

Doppelgänger

Does the man in the following image look familiar?

Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary

Robert Downey Jr in Sherlock Holmes

Uncanny, right?

Let's try another one:

Budapest Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary

Lord Farquaad from Shrek

Coincidence?

Ok, last one:

Hotel Ibis, Nurnberg

The eye of Sauron, Lord of the Rings

How far Sauran has fallen: relegated to a hotel Ibis in Germany for all eternity.

Tetris

When I moved across the country to California, I took advantage of Virgin America's cheap baggage policy: $25 per bag, 50lbs per bag, up to 10 (!) bags. I had about 7 bags worth of stuff that I wanted to bring with me and taking it on the plane turned out to be far cheaper than shipping it or buying it new. There was just one issue: I flew in alone. As it turns out, lugging 7 bags through the airport by yourself can be a bit tricky. Fortunately, my Tetris skills came in handy.

San Francisco Airport

Faces

Humans have a remarkable ability for facial recognition. So remarkable, in fact, that we tend to see faces everywhere. There are entire blogs dedicated to it.

Potsdam, Germany

European cars

You'll rarely see an SUV, van or other big vehicle in Europe. They tend to stick to small cars. Really small.

Toilets

You probably know that medieval castles often had huge, thick walls designed to keep enemies out. You may have even heard that they would rain down arrows and boiling hot oil on any invaders who dared approach. What you probably didn't known, however, is the other thing that would rain down castle walls. It turns out that they built outhouses - which were little more than a seat with a hole in it - high up on the outside of the castle walls. Talk about adding insult to injury. Funnier still is the fact that the doors to these outhouses would only have locks from inside the walls; apparently, some invaders were determined enough that they tried scaling the walls and breaking in through the outhouse.