If you live abroad (ie not UK), what's life like in your country?

[purrswhileheeats]

Apologies if this has already been done

Here we have to obtain a permit to go out and must carry ID; police are stopping motorists and pedestrians and handing out on-the-spot fines to anyone found without both, no exceptions. Local FB pages inundated with expats complaining they 'can't use the sunbeds on the beach' or complaining they've been fined for not carrying the correct documents.

Weirdest thing though is seeing how the locals have changed. They are passionate, loud people who usually greet each other with handshakes and kisses; I have never seen a nation so subdued. So strange too how a country of queue-refusers can suddenly comply with social distancing, will they go back to normal 'once all this is over'?

MIL just pleaded ignorance when she got stopped. But she has no access to social media and doesn't watch the news so she didn't know the rules and didn't believe us when we told her. She didn't carry on with her business though, she went straight home, sorted out the form and tried again later. We are in the east of the island. I have read it's worse in Paphos.

I feel safe here though. I feel like I'm being looked after.

I was struggling with the dc. I couldn't get on with the home-schooling. I got a few bits delivered from our local toy shop to help motivate them and their service was excellent.

Our local big supermarket (Lidl) has been fully stocked. No queue to get in, they're dishing out gloves and sanitiser on the door and everyone following the 2m rule.

My dc attend the village pre-school. They'd only been there a couple of weeks. I got a text from their teacher wishing them well.

Our local hospital is excellent and is being used as the covid treatment centre on the island.

I had a parcel from the UK caught up in the post when they restricted international mail and it looks like they might deliver it to my house which makes me very happy.

We have very comfortable temperatures, my garden is full of flowers and my family are ok so it's not a bad place to be quarentined.

Sweden, so an outlier here! Schools for 15-18 yr olds are closed, and gatherings of more than 50 prohibited since Friday. Bars are table service only. Other than that it is normal- except I live right by Denmark and I cant go there anymore! I am off to work in a minute so interested to see how many students arrive- I work in an international school so many families seem to be following their home nations advice, and we have depleted numbers. Am not sure if Swedish schools also have students opting to stay home. For us it's very annoying as I am teaching and setting online work which is stressful!

Thanks @yourethecomebackkid. Hope the supermarkets are soon fully stocked in Auckland, and your poster arrives! Take care and stay safe.

@middleager - yes it’s very impressive that everywhere is being disinfected (including all public transport, which is needed for key workers).

I'm in Tanzania.

Schools are closed. Large public gatherings are banned. Except for religious reasons , the virus is satanic and so will not live in churches, so people should go and pray for it to go away.

Officially there are less than 20 cases, someone told me there are 400 and 4 deaths but I have not read that anywhere. I think it is somewhere between the two.

I work in an international boarding school and live on campus, so don't get out much normally. When I go out now it is quieter and shops all having hand washing stations. I have heard of foreigners being shouted at but that hasn't happened to me.

There are people who believe Africans can't get the virus, which obviously affects behaviour. But it is hard for people who live in close proximity to each other and have no running water to follow the guidelines.

Just to add all of my friends and colleagues are thankful to be here rather than our home countries.

A lot of measures of support have been announced - too many to list though!

I'm in Spain - on a quiet street outside a small town. We are observing lockdown. DH and I do one dog walk each a day and he goes to the supermarket once a week. We are more shielded from police here but we understand they are stopping cars with more than one person in, and patrolling the town. There's still a bit of traffic around but we see very few other people on the dog walks, except at 8pm each evening when most people on our street stand on the pavement outside their gates to applaud the frontline workers.

Generally though, we have heard that it's pretty strict, lots of people are getting fined for being out when then shouldn't. There have been only four cases diagnosed in my town so far.

Singapore here. 14 day stay home notice or quarantine for all arrivals as of last weekend, all businesses to allow work from home if at all possible, no gatherings over 30 pax, everyone must stay 1m apart at all times (shops/malls etc have to mark out queues on the floor and limit # of people in the shop).

Local schools still open for now but the gov have been very clear about why - they want to know exactly where everybody is at all times for effective contract tracing, so keeping kids in schools helps them do that.

We are at around 800 detected cases here, and there have been 3 deaths so far (all in their 70s with previous conditions). The contact tracing they are doing every time somebody is diagnosed is pretty impressive, the contacts are instructed to stay home for 14 days. I think people have followed instructions as much as possible.

The gov is doing A LOT of clear consistent communicating, daily whatsapp updates, streams of articles etc which I think reassures a lot of people. Singapore is big on that kind of 'campaign' communication anyway, so the population is receptive to it.

Had a day early on of a bit of panic buying but that was several weeks ago now, shops all fairly well stocked now.

Big package announced recently to help those put out of work, interestingly they are trying to move people short term to other jobs when they can e.g. taxi drivers becoming delivery drivers for the immediate period, that kind of thing. Some of the stuff happening here is only possible because this is a small island that is used to a lot of top-down control, compared to UK/US anyway.

All things considered I'm happy I'm here, but I do worry about family back in the UK...

Sydney Australia p. Schools opened but government encouraging people to home school their children. Attendance at our local school is 15%. Social distancing but no lock down. All group social activities cancelled but you can still get your haircut even though you have no where to go! New polices being implemented daily making your head spin

Fascinating thread. UK here, really interesting to see how different it all is to here!

Fascinating thread. This is what I love most about Mumsnet - all the different voices!

Yes, really interesting reading posts from all over the world.
We are in Cologne in Germany, schools closed for the third week now. Fairly strict rules about keeping your distance. People seem to be taking this pretty seriously.

I'm in Kuwait. Schools were closed initially for 2 weeks from 1st March then extended to August. Online learning is happening via google classroom at my kids school. All malls shops beaches parks etc are closed. Airport is closed. Supermarkets are open and pharmacies from 5am -3pm and take aways/groceries can also be delivered during these times. You can only visit a local co-op store if your ID card states you live in the area and they take temperature and give gloves etc when you arrive. This doesn't apply to other supermarkets (like the chain ones). You can go out for a walk if needed but it's getting quite hot now so we have been indoors quite about. Curfew is in place from 5pm - 4am. If you are caught you get a £27.5k equivalent fine 3 years in prison or deportation. The banks have just announced they will waive loan and credit card payments for everyone for 6 months and they are trying to get rents waived as well ( only Kuwaitis can own property). They have dealt with it really well here and isolated the source quickly. Feel safer here than I would in the UK to be honest.

So interesting to hear what other countries are doing!

I'm in the Netherlands. Schools, universities and restaurants are closed but most shops are still open. They've been a bit vague and gradually tightening up about gatherings. Children are still encouraged to play out and are doing so. I think initially the students took that to include them (although many are international, so might just have been trying to pull the foreigner card) but now they're fining older teenagers and studenty age people in big groups. We went for a long bike ride at the weekend and saw almost no one. But that might have been due to the strong wind! Shops are a little bare with staff struggling to fill the shelves, but it's nearly back to normal after a few days of chaos. Lots of pleas 'Please don't hamster!' I think that's one of my favourite Dutch verbs: hamsteren (to stockpile/stock up). It feels very Monty Python "your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries".

Oh, and car accidents have reduced by 50% compared to this week last year. I don't know if traffic is down by more than 50%, but there are more delivery scooters out and they certainly crash a lot.

France here. Apart from all the others have already said about the situation in France, the amount of weird conspiracy shit out there is scary. Moaning about the government is always good practice here, but this is something else and a lot of it comes from the usual bot creating sites. The political fallout from it will be difficult to manage.

Loving hamsteren!

Rural SW France, about an hour south of Limoges. Some shortages in supermarket, but mostly normal.

Fascinating read especially the many countries who went into lockdown before us.
I had to ring vodafone about a problem with my plan and a lovely lady in Egypt took the call. Once the problem was sorted, she couldn’t wait to ask about the coronavirus here in uk
She’s in Cairo, working from home and said all shops and restaurants closed.
That’s all we had time for

@eaglejulesk yep I know. She’s a citizen. She has plans, she was sneezing on entry, others is she would have done the self isolation. She left Oz because their dreadful PM wouldn’t help Kiwi’s who aren’t citizens. Although I hear today they can now get help

Crown dependency (which, despite many people thinking otherwise, is not UK nor has it been EU!) Quiet roads & streets, social distancing, non essential shops shut, schools closed except to key workers, one in one out in supermarkets. Going to take a MASSIVE hit later in the year as large events pass that have already been cancelled ‘hit home’

@LittleMissnotLittleMrs - which one?

Very interesting thread.

@LittleMissnotLittleMrs I used to live in a crown dependency and have friends there so have been following closely. With one small hospital and an elderly population I really worry for them.