Biggest cultural shock you have come across?

when i went to uni in the 90s in teh UK there were barely any asian (indian subcontinent people) and i put with 3 years of people eyeballing me everytime i cooked anything. even cooking rice i would get "oh wow what are you cooking?". i'd grown up in london and found this weird.
my second culture shock is that im currently watching a lot of scandi crime programmes on TV (like the killing, wallander, department q, that kind of thing)and without fail, there is always open hostility/ racist phrases used when referring to muslims. Immigration and terrorism is a key theme running throughout everything. I am always shocked, in uk dramas/ films on mainstream tv/ netflix i have never seen this. is this commonplace in scandinavia?

Most people live cheek by jowl in Europe, not just in Poland. In Italy it is virtually unheard of for dcs to have their own bedrooms - most share with siblings and often they or their parents sleep on a sofa bed in the sitting room which is tidied away come morning. I've been in many houses where the dcs/teens most definitely do not have any "stuff" out. Their possessions are kept tidily in one cupboard or box. This is not because people are poor - they just don't attach much importance to sleeping space/privacy.

In the middle of the first term, I was having some problems with a bloke who lived in the room above me. I called my brother who brought his friends over and they, basically, kidnapped him and threatened to break his legs. This was a pretty normal way of resolving things where I grew up. My flatmates were completely horrified and news of this event spread all round the University.

What? Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one that's shocked reading this. It seems very violent and a bit... well, rough.

In many countries babies and toddlers are considered to be communal property, so people give advice or make comments that would be considered weird in the UK. On the other hand it's probably safer for the kids because people aren't scared to intervene.

Glitter - agree entirely about servants. I find it very difficult to deal with them....

I'm in Hong Kong, so its culture shock on a daily basis...
Language barrier is huge.
Some local companies black out the windows a la IKEA so employees lose track of time so stay there well into the evening. I worked for a local company and they did this.
They don't really queue here - they barge in. Not for the faint hearted!
They cancel anything at any given moment and don't give two hoots about your time being wasted.
No such thing as customer service.
And in response the customers are rude, too.
If something is expensive then it's got to be better than the less expensive item.
A conversation preceding a meeting takes precedence over the start time of the meeting...so if you turn up to a 9am meeting don't expect it to start at 9am. But you have to be prepared to cancel your next meeting to allow for the first to finish.

And the list goes on and on and on...

Mercifully though, they are obsessed with food which suits me fine.

Yes I remember bed sharing in eastern europe too. Spent a few months in a large bed similer size to two beds together on a platform in lodz. Sometimes 3 people slept there sometimes 6 people. Sometimes a couple would have sex at one end of the bed while the rest pretended to sleep.

I have never in my life seen or heard of 10 plus people living in a 2 bedroom home in Poland OP. Even in the communist era I have never known this.

Having to buy gas bottles when we lived in Valencia - first time i ran out of hot water and gas then had to find out where to replace the bottles and how to hook it all up! I soon learnt ( and we were not told by the landlord any of this)
Watching Ed Byrne and Dara O'Brine on tiv last night in Malaysia , they were amazed at all the different religions and cultures, how diverse it was.
I had no idea either as i;ve never been there!

In the middle of the first term, I was having some problems with a bloke who lived in the room above me. I called my brother who brought his friends over and they, basically, kidnapped him and threatened to break his legs. This was a pretty normal way of resolving things where I grew up. My flatmates were completely horrified and news of this event spread all round the University.

Erm, WTF? I'm not surprised they were horrified.

The rubbish piled high on the streets in Ko Samui - right next to the shops selling Jimmy Choo shoes and Prada handbags!

A man in Morroco doing a pee whilst fully clothed, just standing in the street watching The World go by.

American gun laws!

user Haha! Before University I'd only ever eaten at Harvesters or Toby carveries. A guy from my course took me to a "proper" restaurant and was mortified when I tucked my napkin into my top. He told me the "right" way to do it. At the end of the night I told him he was a pretentious twat. I still have to fight the urge to tuck my napkin into my top. It just makes more sense than on your lap

Oh and having a maid. Hated it. She would get angry if I tried to do my washing (but it would come back with holes in 😢)

Going to a sheep feast in Kyrgyzstan. After we'd sat for some time round a long table eating snacks and salads, everyone trooped outside to see the sheep being slaughtered in the courtyard. DP and I went for a stroll while it was butchered, and came back to see an old woman washing its entrails in a huge bowl of water, at the same time keeping an eye on a baby in one of those walker things beside her. The whole lot was boiled and served up as we sat in another room, on quilts on the floor round a low table. Two young men were given the head, which they split open to eat the brains and thus acquire extra intelligence.

It wasn't exactly a shock, more fascinating.

Crossing to the Asian side of Istanbul and within a minutes' walk you are among barefoot children collecting water from communal taps, using old paint cans as buckets. The Ceramic Mosque is well worth a visit though and the chaps in its tea-room were the male Muslim version of English parish ladies, foisting tea and cake on us.

Most unexpected culture shock - rural American mid-West. Not counting the time I ended up at the hotel with the KKK convention, the insularity and suspicion of anything educated, foreign and in particular, any food posher than Taco Hell, let alone 'socialized medicine', was astounding.

Being held at gunpoint by a tax driver in Bangkok which led to me having a wonder through the slums. He decided to switch his meter off on the wireless road.

Stray dogs running in packs around bkk

Having a conversation with a hotel barmaid in a Thai resort hotel and saying how I did a similar job at home. She had this long conversation with me about how she was still "lower" than me much to my insistence that we were equals.

That Thai girls, particulate from the Isan, areas would be sent to to the cities and work whilst sending money home to husbands etc who wouldn't work and just sit around and chew khat

Baby elephants being paraded down city streets for tourists

Learning that "being run over by a cement mixer" was local talk for probably been murdered

OP, I had once read somewhere that houses in Poland are bigger than the UK because they normally house 3 generations. So isn't that the case?? It seems to me that it's a myth that in other (European) countries people live in huge properties.

You'll be happy to hear they do now Hotel. Long overdue....but Ireland and women's health....well, let's not derail the thread....

When I went with a friend to visit his family in Kenya. They employed a maid, a handyman, and a gardener.

When we arrived at the house from the airport, the manservant insisted on taking my case, and every single job - no matter how trivial - I was told (not in a high and mighty way) - to leave to the staff.

I'm not cut out for being waited on hand and foot. It really didn't sit well.

Attitudes towards children. (Walking to school, pointy things etc.)

Actually, I think this one is the biggest one, tbh.

I live in the UK and don't have mains gas and constant hot water. That's not that unusual surely?

In this country, the widespread idea that children shouldn't attend funerals for fear seeing a dead body and/or adult grief will traumatise them permanently.

@Chavelita THIS! I was coming on to post exactly the same thing.

The attitude to death in this country will always flummox me. The first funeral I remember attending was when I was five. I also know how to sympathise appropriately. This notion of ignoring death is weird. You don't need to be interfering or in people's business, but you can at least sympathise!

Silence. Or maybe more like quietness in Japan.

Being confronted with racism (in the UK).
Alcohol.
What I call "British chattiness". I really like that one, btw. So maybe I shouldn't call it culture shock. More like culture surpise...

In USA many years ago billboard posters advertising Smear tests by some charity, the stark realisation that things we take for granted healthcare wise are not available to many there.