The place names!
Being as obsessed with maps as I was from a very young age, I grew up as a small kid with Greenland having placenames which were Danish, and thus relatively pronounceable.
As I got into my teens, Greenland had had Home Rule (from Denmark) for a few years, and this suddenly changed the map of Greenland as atlases now had Inuit place names instead of Danish ones. This really caught my attention and intrigued me.
Having a world map on my wall, where Greenland was suddenly referred to by the more alien looking name of Kalaallit Nunaat, was a starter for ten.
Then, as I thumbed through atlases in geography lessons in high school, a whole new weird world opened up before me. I'd been used to, and comfortable with, Danish names such as Sondre Stromfjord which became Kangerlussuaq; Thule which became Qaanaaq; and my favourite, Scoresbysund became Ittoqqortoormiut!
All very weird looking names. Such place names were actually slightly scary to me. It did however shed a whole new intriguing and charming light on Greenland.
Going off topic, I had a similar experience with Spain, as well as other countries through time. For example Spain had recently come out of dictatorship, and new and wonderful Catalan and Basque place names started appearing in atlases, which along with the languages were still all but banned from use when I was very young.