Biggest cultural shock you have come across?

We all say "good morning" in Hampshire too, we're only 90 miles from London but we're very friendly!

My biggest culture shock was going to America and seeing the lack of health service/social help for poor people. My dd was at a very liberal uni in a middle class area yet the town's Main Street was lined with people begging. The heavily pregnant mum was the worst for me she was there every day for the two weeks I was there. Also stories from my dd's friends of students not calling an ambulance when we would eithout hesitation in U.K., because they are scared of the bills.

We are so so lucky in the uk to have a society which, on the whole, helps you if you need it.
I found America very brutal, with being the richest country in the world but treating it's poorest people like they do. I cannot get my head round it's philosophy.

That the DC are growing up in a region awash with guns, and DS1 thinks nothing of high fiving soldiers and policemen who are armed to the teeth. He was scooped up by a guard a few weeks ago who rested DS1 on the butt of his gun. Not cool with that being the new normal.

I'm completely cool with it. It's an awful shame it needs to be normal these days, but it does, and it's for the benefit and safety of all of us. I am particularly reassured to see it in airports and other areas that are a high security risk.

The Vatican. I left that place with such a dislike for organised religion. All that money, all that art and history locked away where only the very few can afford to pay to see some of it. It absolutely sickened me. It's wrong.

And yes, Rome was filthy. The graffiti!

It's absolutely not legal to sell your kidneys in the U.K. You can receive "expenses" for sperm and egg donation but it's not a significant sum of money. "egg-sharing" where young women with fertility problems get free IVF treatment in return for donated eggs is the closest we have to selling body parts.

"here in Yorkshire most people are chatty and like to pass the time of day with each other, it's really nice! Barely spoke to another person when I was in London though despite being surrounded."

I live in a South Yorkshire village. Whenever we go out for a walk people always say good morning or hello, even complete strangers.

I don't know if this is cultural or that these men were just being rude, but when DD was tiny I was waiting for a lift at a local shopping mall when a group of Japanese business men rudely barged in front of me and took the lift. Do Japanese men think that women are inferior or is this a cultural thing?

Rwandan border with Congo. Children trying to wipe the "white paint" off my arm.

BertieBotts

Similar here in Finland - DD's nursery takes the children for trips about once a week, no word to parents beforehand, they go down to the lake to float wooden boats that they make or explore the forest.
The school she starts at this Autumn has no fences or walls around it except for at the bottom of the playing field to prevent balls going onto the road. When I used to pick OH's little sister up from a different school occasionally no one questioned me when she went home with me, even though they had no idea who I was.

Not so much cultural but I was in Antigua for the cricket World Cup and they'd only just finished the stadium, there were absolutely massive rocks all over the place but they wouldn't let you keep the lid to your bottle of water in case you threw it!

When I went to the house of a friend of my ILs who lives in an ex British Colony and was served tea by her maid who knelt in front of me to hand me the cup and saucer. I've genuinely never felt so uncomfortable.

I later found out the maid actually had a very good deal in comparison to many of her friends and the whole subservient thing was mostly for show but still

ShoutOutToMyEx as BertieBotts says, my son is mixed race and has Afro hair. I'd taken him to that barbers many times before for a haircut but this time it was a different barber on his own and he point-blank refused to do it.

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia.

I did think that when I went but then thought about how it's legal to sell your kidneys, eggs, sperm etc in the UK. I don't see why it should be illegal for women to sell sex of their own free volition and regulation is good for them.

So you say, I'd rather there wasn't any prostitution around at all though.

The red light district in Amsterdam was a massive shock. Seeing women put on display as if they were products was weird.

The fire brigade uniforms in Ecuador. Anyone remember that pink camouflage that was trendy for 30 second in 2005? That's the fire officers' uniform in Ecuador.

www.lanesisland.com/news/firemen.jpg

That the DC are growing up in a region awash with guns, and DS1 thinks nothing of high fiving soldiers and policemen who are armed to the teeth. He was scooped up by a guard a few weeks ago who rested DS1 on the butt of his gun. Not cool with that being the new normal.

Ive never heard of people standing on toilet seats in the UK!

It happens in London and other bibig cities more than you'd think. I've seen a few signs in recent years, illustrating how to sit. We have people here from all round the world so it's inevitable that people are going to bring their own cultural norms with them. If people come from a very different culture, the chances are they genuinely don't know how to use a toilet properly. And you do often get comments, as seen earlier in this thread, about British people being confused by Japanese loos, or not knowing how to use a bidet, so it does work both ways round.

Mind you, one of the biggest culture shocks I've had since joining MN is the numbers of (presumably mainly British) people who are fucking neurotic about loos - hovering above seats, covering the seat with paper, refusing to touch the cubicle door with bare hands, holding on for hours rather than risk using a public toilet, complaining when workmen use their loo etc. Fuck knows how some of these people would cope with a foreign holiday. I actually started a thread about it: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2876592-A-thread-for-those-of-us-who-use-toilets-normally

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia.

I did think that when I went but then thought about how it's legal to sell your kidneys, eggs, sperm etc in the UK. I don't see why it should be illegal for women to sell sex of their own free volition and regulation is good for them.

I moved back to a small English town from living in Scotland, and I still find the wall of inexplicable silence even mid conversation very odd. The sort of depressed shutting down when people start to connect and realise they might like each other.

I've been openly called mad and crazy just for starting or maintaining conversations with people I've only just met, and an observant knowing normal Scottish sense of humour is positioned as upsetting, rude, disrespectful, and problematic. I still don't understand negative politeness, where looking at the floor, not making eye contact, psychologically disappearing in plain view and then apologising for being ten feet away and noticing each other very very weird.

The Germans

soldiers with guns and bayonets on street corners when I was about 12, I (unsurprisingly) found it really intimidating.

Is feeding your kids an early evening meal then partners eating at 8:00 or later common in England, or is it a class thing? My kids grandparents would eat at 8:00 or 8:30 and it was a real shock to me as I'm gasping for food by 6:00. When we lived there it was pre-kids, so I was never sure if it was more usual than not to feed the kids then adults eat later?

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia. I always thought it was a lovely sunny, wholesome kind of place. Sadly disappointed

As a child in France: hole in the floor loo

As an adult in New York: seeing loads of adults without tattoos (where I live in Canada more people under 40 seem to have them than not); no visible homeless (wall to wall homeless addicts in some parts of my city - it's very sad but we're also sadly a bit used to it, in a visual sense at least).

Moving to the UK: we've just bought a new appliance - what do you mean there's no plug?
Washing up bowls - a bit mystifying to the non-British brain.
People just dropping by! Good god. No-one does that where I live. I got to like it, but always slightly surprised me.

When I lived in the U.K., over 20 years ago, people were more open about being racist and anti-Semitic than I was used to. Not that there was more racism, just that people did not give a shit if you thought they were nasty about Jews or didn't want their daughter marrying a dark foreigner.

Just how gorgeous much of Britain is - the architecture and the landscape. Sure there's grim bits, but overall I was in constant happy amazement at how lovely it is.

Moving back to Canada: no-one ever has a moan about work, partners, general annoyances. You must adhere to national cheeriness standards. You also must be committed to achieving and make out that your crap job is your calling. I suspect Americans might go in for that as well.

Having to relearn Canadian vocabulary. Still slip up there w some words.

I worked in an ESL college for a bit. We had to have visual signs as to how to sit on a toilet and also to put the paper down the toilet bowl, not wee and poo stained paper all over the floor (ffs, how does that even work wherever they were from?)

Being on a 5* holiday in the Dominican and driving past the local tip that was alive with children searching through the rubbish, as a mum that was the worst experience ever.
Holidaying in Miami rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous!!!!!!!! Getting lost and finding that barely 5 mins from the airport there was a whole different world of slums built on the banks of a river.

No I think she is white and her son is mixed race or at least that's what the post suggested.

Reverse: walking into an Afro-Caribbean barber's to get my son's hair cut and being refused service. I'd never experienced racism before that.

Is your son white? If so, it's not racism - it's just very different hair to cut, requiring different scissors and razors. Try walking into pretty much any high street hairdressers in the UK as a woman with an Afro - I'd say 9.5 times out of 10 they'll tell you they can't touch it.

Of course if there were other factors that led you to think they were discriminating against you then ignore me - just offering up a possible reason!