Poland

Bollards with red reflectors are fairly easy to spot.

Utility poles often lack a hole at the very bottom.

The pedestrian crossing sign is distinctive, with just a single stripe across it.

Guardrails have an angular profile.

The letters "Ł/ł" are almost never seen outside Poland.

Signs use a dedicated typeface called Drogowskaz, designed specifically for road signs and used only in Poland. The shape of the "t" is distinctive.

Warning signs are orange with a very thin red border.

Ulica means "street." It's used in Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, and Poland.

Churches appear on the map, which can help when pinpointing a location.

Mailboxes are red and marked POCZTA.

Nearly 40% of the country is state-owned forest, and much of it is tall.

Town name endings hint at north versus south. "-wo" and "-no" lean north, while "-ów" and "-ew" lean central-to-south — though it's not a hard rule.

Rows of short apple trees, held up by thin stakes and wire and running on and on in dense lines, mean an apple orchard. The area around Grójec, about 40km south of Warsaw, is the main production region.

Fields with poles about as tall as utility poles, spaced evenly and strung with horizontal wires for vines to climb, mean hop gardens. Nearly 90% of Poland's hops are grown in Lublin Voivodeship.

If long, narrow lakes keep appearing one after another between forests and gentle hills, with the road threading between them, that's the Masurian Lake District (glacial moraine terrain). Jetties and sailboats are common along the shores.

A town of neatly arranged red-brick apartment blocks mixed with steel headframes over mine shafts and dark spoil heaps means the Upper Silesian Coal Basin (around Katowice).

A vast open-pit crater stretching to the horizon, with terraced slopes cut into steps, means a lignite mining site. The largest is Bełchatów in Łódź Voivodeship, with the cooling towers and smokestacks of a thermal power plant right next to it.

Wooden houses built from horizontal logs or planks on a stone foundation, with a large, steep roof and a carved gable end, mean Podhale (at the foot of the Tatra Mountains). Bare, rocky high mountains are often visible in the background.

Bank signs like "Bank spółdzielczy" or "Narodowy Bank Polski" often include the town's name.