These are definitely some of the worst major airports (I’ve been to quite a few of them), but some of the smaller “international” airports offer even more comedy value. A couple from my personal list:

Yep. The French people I’ve met outside of Paris have been generally lovely and very willing to help a poor bewildered tourist. The Parisians, however, have an earned reputation for being rude assholes. The CDG staff are the pure distillation of Parisianness.

Another trick they love to pull at Heathrow is to make you run for your flight, board, then pull the plane off the stand and roll to some far corner of the airport, then tell you the flight is delayed for x hours. That way, you can’t get off and they still get your money.

All of London’s airports are fairly diabolical. Even calling Stansted and Luton “London” is a massive stretch, but Heathrow is just the worst, unless you happen to be flying from the fancy new Terminal 5. Otherwise, it’s 1960s infrastructure retrofitted with 1980s amenities. Only the overpriced duty free “mall” makes…

I’ll add another vote for Burbank. Yes, it does have a fairly limited range of destinations, but if you find the flight you need, it’s a very pleasant experience. Even the TSA staff are friendly and helpful (they must not have got the “pretend to be RoboCop memo the LAX guys live by”). It has the feel of a small town…

My surname is common as hell, but my wife's name is more or less unique (except for her sister, but she took her husband's name). When we got married, she kept her maiden name and, if we decide to have kids, they'll use hers.

Being a Brit, these stories are as horrifying as they are entertaining. I couldn't imagine even thinking about acting like so many of the customers in BCO do. I'd die of mortification.

Yep, the ones I see on the freeway here in Cali regularly exceed the limit by a significant margin. I always suspect they want to use their reward-facing radar on rubes who think it's ok to keep up with cops, as long as you don't pass them. Don't take the bait!

I found Spain to be a dream compared to Italy. All those lovely EU-subsidized highways. The more frequently-visited tourist towns (Toledo, Grenada, Seville, Cadiz) presented their own challenges, but nothing compared to Naples.

May I add Number 15?

The crosswalk situation is similar in large Chinese cities. Only tourists put any trust in the white stripes across major roads. Drivers pay them no heed whatsoever. If you believe drivers will stop when you step onto the crosswalk, you will die. Repeatedly.

I think the car rental companies in Europe recently agreed to pay their customers’ tickets, deducting the penalties from the credit cards they have on file (plus a hefty “handling fee,” of course). I don’t know if it’s throughout Europe, or just in certain countries, but it’s something to be aware of.

My strategy for driving in Florence was straightforward: park at one of the big lots outside of town, take the bus in, walk. The idea of driving down those clogged medieval streets filled me with existential horror.

When it comes to traffic, Naples is a world unto itself. I worked there for six months and had a running bet with my colleagues that, on our regular weekly shuttle bus ride from our hotel to the airport, none of us would ever see a parked car without at least some damage. And we pretty much never did. It seems that…

The table in my company’s main conference room (used for board meetings, etc.) was bought at the bankruptcy sale of a porn production studio. I regularly recognize...sorry, I mean I’ve been told it was used in a number of popular productions.

As someone recently departed (from Top Gear) once said: “The best cars in the world...briefly.”

The Scirocco is very nice, but I would sell important body parts for a 21st Century Corrado.

Wireless electronics. That’s gonna just sail past the FCC and DOT approval process. Judging by how well commercial grade wifi work in congested environments, I wouldn’t be surprised if the putative prototype simply crashed into the nearest wall. Maybe they’ll make the body panels out of lead. That would help with the…

You would have thought they could have waited until she finished farting before taking the pic.

Please carry on. You bring a refreshing breath of the surreal to this sometimes over-earnest forum.