If you live abroad

[NonUrinatInVentum]

From the country you're from (I'm in Switzerland but from Ireland) what's the weirdest thing or quirkiest custom about the place you live?

In Switzerland you're not allowed flush the toilet after 10pm regardless of whether you do a No.1 or No.2 👈🏻 not envy.

Stranger and neighbours frequently and freely give you an earful about how ill behaved your children are and how to remedy said behaviour.

You can Google any Swiss licence plate and find out the name and address of who owns the car

Swedish supermarket conveyor belt etiquette. I miss just chucking it all on, I cant deal with waiting for 30 minutes as Bengt takes one item at a time, turns it over in his hands to find the bar code and then lines it up behind the previous item. Single file groceries with all their bar codes facing out. Its infuriating. Im still too tightly wound for Sweden.

@Katinski
Many areas of Sweden have also banned home car washing as an environmental protection policy. The oil, heavy metals and other pollutants that wash of the car can cause contamination. Many areas are not on mains sewerage so the pollution would end up in the rivers. Most areas don't have chlorinated drinking water either. The carwashes are required to process the dirty water before releasing it.

Swedetalker - Swedish supermarket conveyor belt etiquette. I miss just chucking it all on, I cant deal with waiting for 30 minutes as Bengt takes one item at a time, turns it over in his hands to find the bar code and then lines it up behind the previous item. Single file groceries with all their bar codes facing out. Its infuriating. Im still too tightly wound for Sweden.

Oh I know what you mean. There was a big thing some years ago about checkout staff getting repetitive strain injuries so the "solidaric" thing to do was to line up the barcodes to face the scanner to support staff welfare!

Luckily I've managed to get DH to register for self-scanning!

@NonUrinatInVentum that's such an exaggeration! I lived in Switzerland for years in apartments and we even could use the washing machines at night etc. The only thing we didn't do was dry laundry on the balconies and my dad didn't wash his car in the road

@cultkid maybe where you lived but these are the rules in my building. Expat neighbours have had the police called on them for a baby crying at 11pm.

Which canton are you in? I always found Swiss people so nice and helpful!

In Guernsey there are specified dates between which you have to trim your hedge so it doesn't overhang the road or pavement.

Germany has the car wash thing too. You had to take it to a proper car wash place.

Ah you beat me to it on the Guernsey hedge thing! You'd also have the local douzaine after you if it wasn't trimmed satisfactorily.

German in Germany here - with a comment
People used to wash their cars everywhere and change the oil and pour it into the gutter. The law changed when I was a girl - so ages ago.
Of course you can / are allowed to shower, flush the toilet, run your washing machine at night and on Sundays and children are natural sources of noise. But you have to keep your week as well, when it is your turn to clean the staircase and street.

If you are old enough to work you are old enough to be adressed formally. We've adopted the 'first names' rule at my place of work and I was forced to use infomal language with a racist, mysoginist asshole, just because we shared a workplace. He is gone now. It is incredibly difficult to change from Du back to Sie.
I think the English language uses more indirect means of "distancing" than languages which have one or more formality layers.

Brit in USA.
I am amused every time I get thanked for packing my own shopping if there is no bag packer. Americans just stand there and wait for the checkout worker to scan then pack, it takes forever.

Despite driving being very haphazard everybody always only parks in one direction in a street, I often have an impulse to face the other way ( but don't as I don't want a ticket)

I'm a kiwi in Germany.

I have 2 young kids. Am nonplussed by the obsession with keeping them warm. It was nearly twenty degrees when I picked them up from nursery today. They were wearing snowsuits, hats and scarves! They both yanked the hats off when they saw me coming in the gate, the nursery workers had excellent cats bum mouths

I am also confused by almost nowhere taking cards as payment. It's quite dodgy to pay cash in NZ. There's currently a sign in our supermarket along the lines of 'the future is coming: imagine being able to get cash out at the supermarket'. And no, it hasn't been there since the 1980s

Very interesting.
I had to laugh about one bin going out on the wrong day and every one else following suit.
On our old tourer caravan site where there were about 45 caravans in three rows you could just watch the knock on effect of people dashing home on a Sunday morning
Most of these people lived less than an hour away btw
The mass exodus would start about 10am when there was a huge flurry of tidying up, hoovering, cleaning, emptying the waste water, loo etc, taking things to the car
I’m not joking by about 1 pm the whole place was pretty much deserted apart from a few stragglers like ourselves who in the light nights were more than happy to set off about 8 pm

It was like the first one to leave unnerved the others who felt they had to be away too
Weird

Oooo another thing in Italy. When my sister in law had her first baby, she breast fed. To work out exactly (!?) how much milk her DD was getting she would weigh her first (they had proper baby scales) and weigh her after...... Not sure if this was just a PFB thing for her but apparently all her friends did it

Thunderpunt

That's really funny.

Thinderpant I was told I had to do that with DD in 2011 in a Greek hospital. I managed for a few days and it nearly did me in along with all the other newborn difficulties. I was told to strip DD off before and after as well,so you can imagine what a nightmare that was.

A little difference that can get you into trouble: in Greece is you present yourself with your first name it also implies that the other person can address you in the informal singular...not so much so in France where it implies slightly more familiarity but not there yet until the ‘tu’ issue is raised directly. I got caught out with this with the mayor’s wife of all people!

@DNAwrangler
Where in Germany do you live?
Apart from my local take away and other very minute places I can pay everywhere with my card and withdraw money as well - even in Grömitz and Moosbach.

I'm in a small town in the north.

My parents visited this summer and tried to get euros from the bank (not even ATM!), because they couldn't use their card in shops. They were laughed at and told to go to a bank in Hamburg!

You could pay with card where we lived in Germany, even Contactless. Rhine- Westphalia region.

No one batted an eyelid at you paying bills over 100euro in cash though! I've never used a £50 note in UK, but regularly use 50euro note.. and even a couple of 100euro notes.

I'm in Canton Vaud near the French border.

Booboo - this was back in 2001 so a while back, not sure if things have moved on now, and yes she had to strip her right off poor mite, both before and after

Italy has the deathly breeze, source of all ailments. Got conjunctivitis? Death breeze on the eyeball. Diarrhoea? Death breeze on your tummy (pull those trousers up to your armpits!). No bacteria or viruses involved. Air conditioning is the death breeze on steroids. Hence the excessive scarf wearing, even in 35° heat. I once had an assistant who had winter scarves/pashminas and summer ones, which she used to don, along with a light cardI, as soon as she set foot in the office, in the metro, in a bar or indeed anywhere with air conditioned interiors.

I did the weighing after feeding as well, but only in public places. I lied about it at home, there was no way I was shelling out cash on an extra set of weighing scales that everyone else seemed to have. It would have sent my already fragile mental health over the edge. DD was fine, just not chubby.

Despite driving being very haphazard everybody always only parks in one direction in a street

I'm an Aussie in the UK and it took me a while to get used to parking in the wrong direction. Also the general politeness of drivers, even in London. 11 years here and I'm still not comfortable just pulling out from a side street and people slowing or stopping until I'm on my way. In Sydney that would mean a hand held on the horn and a few choice words being yelled (Sydney drivers are pricks)

I'd love a "no noisy DIY on Sundays" rule here.