Expats, tell me what aspect or social norm of your new country was strange to you?

If you think a full English is bad try a glasgow fry - loads more all fried and more meat

According to "back in time for tea" it came about due to the holiday industry as a big breakfast for b&b's to serve when families started going on holidays in U.K. In (I think) the 1950's

I'm a Yugoslav in England.

Vinegar on chips... why?!!?!

A good old British queue

Lack of bidets 😳

American in England. I know some I have mentioned have been said before and I haven’t read through the entire thread

1. Are you all right vs How are you?

Made me paranoid, thinking I looked ill or sad

1. Not rinsing dishes

Annoys me to no end. How do you know if the dishes are completely clean if they are still covered in bubbles

1. No outlets in the bathroom

Rather not need to take the vacuum out or need an extension cord to blow dry my hair in the bathroom or to charge my toothbrush.

1. English Breakfast/fry up

Too greasy/fried for my taste and don’t understand the combination.. tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, fried bread, fried eggs black pudding, bacon, sausages etc.. how did this come about

1. Portions sizes

Constantly hear about how big American portion sizes are, but I see the same and even worse here, especially the takeaways

1. Closing hours

Makes no sense to me for things to shut at 17:30/18:00 if most people are working 9-5 pm

7.Soaps at night

1. Open 24 hours doesn’t actually mean 24 hours

Do love the portable card machines
Bank holidays
Tube timetables - minutes to next train
English countryside
Castles & Manor Houses
Cool unnatural hair colours
British Style
The Weather
Helpfulness especially in London
Sticky Toffee Pudding
The history
Accents

Malta:
driving is crazy; aim seems to be to get as close as possible to the bumper of the car in front. Road signs are five feet before the turning. People accelerate towards roundabouts. Drivers honk their horns when going fast round a blind bend as if that will save a life. I know it’s a Mediterranean thing but a cheese-stuffed Wudy? Boak!
Fireworks in the day and night time for a week before the village religious festival (festa). The point seems to be to make as loud a bang as possible as the daytime ones aren’t really visible. Weekend nights in the summer sound like the artillery barrage before the first day of the Somme. Village festa decorations constructed by groups of blokes who nail home made fireworks to rickety structures without taking the lit fags out their mouths. Every summer there’s at least one massive explosion in a firework ‘factory’ e.g. Guze’s shed. The hunters who blast every tiny bird out the sky. Construction work starts at 7am. Demolishing beautiful old houses to put up loads of concrete shoeboxes. Groups of blokes sitting in village square shouting at each other - you realise they’re just chatting about the family or something. No sense of appropriate volume.
But I still love it there. Most people are lovely, have a great sense of humour. Pastizzi for 35cents for lunch. Amazing local food produce. Walk into the summer sea without flinching because it’s cold.

People eat mayonnaise with chips here in France. Our stagiaire does, anyway!

The shocking predominance of diary products in the British menu

Mayonnaise on chips in the UK? I'm a Brit and the only time I've eaten mayonnaise on chips was in Holland!

And Belgium.
Or in London in Belgo.

Another Australian one: saying "excuse me", rather than "excuse me please". It still sounds like an instruction to me, and bloody rude, though I know that's not how it's intended.

Yes Britain does seem weirdly over protective of children to most foreigners.
What gets me are the comments on MN sometimes insisting that children at a certain age simply can not do x, when they seem totally unaware that children of that age routinely do X in other countries.

This is a great thread.
I'm South African, living in UK now but have worked/ travelled in a few places particularly as most of my family have married foreigners and moved so we tend to have family all over the world.

The British queuing is the one that gets me the most. Crowded bus stop in rush hour... but everyone queues in a straight line even though a more fluid system would take less space and be quicker to get on bus. I find it incomprehensible.

Children starting school so young. And being expected to meet pretty high milestones very early. My parents still don't understand our worries about DS' reading because in their minds he should barely have started to learn to read!

Greeks asking you how much you earn. Practically the first question.

French kissing. I still haven't adjusted to that one. I worked for a french company and found the kissing of everyone, including my boss, on a regular basis odd. She didn't work in our office so we only saw her every few weeks but we had to do the double kiss every time. Completely threw me. And when I finally cracked it, I left and went to work for an English firm and got myself in trouble by accidentally stepping up for a kiss on one memorable, and embarrassing, occasion!

In lots of Europe I see children being far more independent very young. I have nephews and nieces who go to school alone from the age of about 5. I think we're too strict here, but 5 seems crazy to me.

Londoner in Israel:
Even though everyone thinks Israel is a war zone I love the safety here - my 16year old daughter walks around with girl friends at midnight and isn't harassed. I can go jogging on my own at 10pm and not be afraid. My 6 year old spends all day Saturday hanging out with different friends and I have no idea where she is, she'll come home when it gets dark.
There is more Middle East pushing and touching and less personal space than in the UK. There is a lot more talking to strangers in the supermarket and on public transport, and unwanted advice that your baby is overdressed, under-dressed, should be walking, potty-trained, should be carried etc by well-meaning strangers. Big family get-togethers at every possible occasion.

Mayonnaise on chips in the UK? I'm a Brit and the only time I've eaten mayonnaise on chips was in Holland!

@losmn fair enough - I'll be more specific in the future. I am in the southern bit.

Mayonnaise on chips in the UK. I thought people were kidding until I saw it and tasted it...and its actually quite nice.

FiveHours - I'm fascinated by the idea that someone could see stripy lawns as something new/commentable! having grown up with them they seem perfectly normal, but looking at it through the eyes of an adult who didn't grow up with them, it must seem a bit strange!

I have been known to chequerboard my lawn

First example:
3rd day of school in new (Asian) country. My 6 year old daughter comes home with her class reading book. I flip through and there is a picture of a child lying face down on the floor in front of the teacher at the front of the class.
Me: Whats this child doing?
DD: Oh, she's saying sorry to the teacher. He's angry because she's late.
Me: Is that what the children at school have to do if they are late?
DD: Yes they have to lie on the floor to apologise properly to the teacher.
Me: (Brief pause....)
OK we are guests in this country and we have to be adaptable/ sensitive to new experiences blah blah blah and we will embrace the new school/ /culture/ country way of doing things, even though Im uncomfortable with it...but....... thats as far as apologising goes. Ever. Anything else, tell them to talk to me...
Being fair, we had a great 4 years there!
2nd Example:
When we moved from Asia back to Europe and we realised that our blond haired 3 year old thought it was fine to clamber up into anyones arms in the park to be cuddled and petted and have his hair stroked like he was used to in Asia. Resulted in a slightly freaked elderly German gentleman!

I consider myself an immigrant.
I don't really understand what an ex-pat is. Ex-pat seems to imply a community of similar nationality people which I don't have.

Brit in the USA (I don't know if this has been said before - I haven't read 15 pages), but the effusive greetings used to get me every time to start with e.g.:

Total stranger: Hi! How ARE you?
Me: Er ... I'm well thank you. How are you?
Stranger: [blank look] How can I help you today?
Me: Er ... I'm just browsing thanks ... [scuttles off]

And in restaurants:
Server: What can I get you to drink?
Me: Some water please
Server: Sorry?
Me: Some water please
Server: [now looking desperate] Sorry I didn't get that
Me: A glass of warder please
Server: Oh! Okay.

I'm an immigrant. I don't think it has anything to do with whether you've moved to a richer country or for a better life.

I'm quite intrigued to know what DH is though. He's American by descent but never lived in the US as a child. He first moved to the US age 18. He's bounced between the UK and US since then. He has an English accent, and many passports.

Boxthefox - yes to all of that. Especially the lunch between 12 and 2 (l’heure de dejeuner - it should of course be deux heures) Even during a recent trip to IKEA and arriving at 3.15pm we found all meatballs and lunch dishes had been cleared though there was an extensive range of gouter items - cakes, pastries etc. My mum used to laugh when invited to the school fete at the kids’ French school in London that there would be a MASSIVE queue for food at 1pm and then no one until 4pm when the gouter queue built up. None of that all day grazing you see at English school fetes.

@ZuLuwarrior
Great story, just wondered which one of the 54 countries in Africa did you mean?

In Nigeria we say "how now?"

I feel bad about my remarks on NZ so in order to redress the balance I I'll say what baffles me about the UK when I'm back there.

• Mawkish obsession with WW1 & WW2
• Fetishisation of the NHS
• Smoothly polite but entirely unhelpful shop assistants
• Long helplines with "computer says no" at the the other end.
• Not telling off children who are playing up in public
• Banks staffed by red tape and Daleks
• People who blandly smile instead of saying they're about to explode with frustration at said helplines / shop assistants / children / banks.
• Regarding Scotland as somehow special and uniquely different.

Visiting the UK after years in NZ is like entering a huge, humming high-tech machine where everything moves around with extreme efficiency; however, you have to do what the machine wants and if you don't, it's just impossible.

poop You are an expat if you aren't on a local contract. DH is an expat and I'm an immigrant here in the US. DH could be called back to HQ at any given time with very little notice. DH is Danish.

I considered myself an expat in Berlin because we were there for a limited period relating to DH’s job contract.

Just returned from a month in NZ and absolutely loved it. If it’s supposed to be like the UK 30 years ago, I can’t say I noticed it - and I’ve lived here for 67 years.

But a few things:

• liberal use of the word “bugger”. I did notice this and I gather from posts above it’s normal and not offensive
• with one or two exceptions, the painfully slow service in restaurants. We ate out every day and toured both islands, so it wasn’t confined to one area. If you order for example a croissant and a coffee, don’t expect them to arrive at the same time. And if you’re eating with others, don’t expect your meals to arrive at the same time.
• bacon with everything. Please, do you have any dishes without bacon?

But we found kiwis to be very friendly and are planning to return. One day.