Things that baffle you about another country

[Soubriquet]

America:-

Why are the gaps in the toilet doors so wide? Do you really enjoy an audience?

Why can’t tax be included in the price? If I want to buy something for a dollar it should be a dollar! Not dollar plus tax!

Australia:-

Still weird that you have Christmas in summer.

Wonder if they have different Christmas songs there.

Can’t see walking in a winter land being a big hit.

More like hiding from a hot heatwave

@MolyHolyGuacamole

Space pure and simple, tumble dryers mean one less cupboard and not everyone wants a separate one (washer dryers are common in flats). My bugbear is why developers don't put laundry cupboards with stacked equipment upstairs like we used to have airing cupboards for water tanks mostly not needed now with modern boilers.

@MolyHolyGuacamole

America - guns, god & glory Also the mad patriotism, flags flying everywhere

UK (and I think maybe a lot of Europe, at least the few countries I've visited) - the lack of fans/air conditioning in the MONTHS that heat now lasts. I will never understand this and it puts me off staying anywhere but my own home in the hot months, and no one else seems to be bothered by the heat and are just happy to sweat? Or have just one fan for a whole house? And staying in a hotel with no AC and a duvet, omg I could cry. Everyone goes on about global warming, but you mention a fan and suddenly no one needs to own one as apparently it's only hot 2 weeks of the year

In the UK it is unlikely that air conditioning would be used for more than a few days a week for a few weeks of the year.

Further south in mainland Europe it does get hot for months, but not here.

Global warming isn't going to make the UK hotter, it's going to make it wetter.

Not sure if this is Canada or America wide or just the places I’ve stayed/lived in but why are their tumble dryers so massive. You live in a one bed apartment and do your laundry in the laundry room and the tumble dryer and washing machine is an industrial sized one. Lots of one bedroom flats doing laundry for one person in a massive machine using the same resources as if it was full bit for just a few items. Then if you hang your washing out in the sun on a hot day instead that is really frowned upon.

When I lived in Vancouver everything was all about the environment and organic this and carbon neutral that, all except the huge fucking tumble dryers for one jumper and the complaints because I put my clothes in my garden for a couple of hours.

Italy - why is there nowhere to sit down in Rome? No benches anywhere. I saw an elderly woman being ordered to her feet by an armed guard while sitting on some steps of a museum building. Even the cafes have limited seating with an extra charge with most people standing around eating.

I seem to recall benches in a lot of places in Rome...the Villa Borghese Gardens, along the Tevere....but talking about a museum makes me wonder if you're referring to the Vatican Museums, which of course are not in Italy

In a lot of Europe you pay more to sit down at a cafe, and if it's a touristy /city centre place there can be another tariff for sitting outside, too. You can come to prefer it- you can get a coffee down you on your way to work cheaply and efficiently standing (and ordering) at the bar, or you can enjoy a leisurely afternoon spending hours chatting to all and sundry. They're different experiences and fulfil different needs.

@SionnachRua

England - the customs around funerals. Why do they seem to take so long? Why do people angst over whether they should or shouldn't go?

Tbf I feel like MN could be warping my understanding of English funerals but the above is so alien to me.

To be honest I would never advise anyone to take MN as representative of anything in the UK!

^sitting at a table and chatting to all and sundry.

@PerseverancePays

We just bought a newish build and it has. All the cupboards you mentioned. Bigger house though

I'm on a water meter. No way would I wash dishes without a bowl. You have to have good bowl hygiene. Absolutely no food to remain on the plates. I do still rinse things first if its sauce or gravy but I still use much less water than if I was using the running tap to wash dishes.

Agree about Rome. I remember getting an ice cream and wanting to sit down to eat it, but couldn't find anywhere. Sat down on some unimportant looking steps and immediately got yelled at by the police.

@WhatWouldPhyllisCraneDo

Why are kinder eggs banned in America but not guns? (Or is that a myth?) Surely guns have killed far far more people?

I believe that the US has finally got into their big-girl pants re Kinder eggs and they're no longer on the naughty step.

@Soubriquet
Why do Americans have their dates backwards?!

Why have month and then the date instead of what everyone else around the world does?

This. It makes no sense. I once did some work with a (European) global pharmaceutical company and they insisted that all the paperwork was dated in the 31-JAN-2021 format for precisely this reason because Americans are contrary 02-01-2021 means February 1st to Americans and January 2nd to literally everyone else.

Italy, why no queueing? Really? How does that work? I’ll admit, I’m English, I love a good queue, so I am biased. But it blows my mind when in a country with no queuing culture. I just don’t know how they live with the chaos!

Thank you! I'm American and we live on 23 acres in the Appalachian Mountains. Only a fool wouldn't have a gun around here. Like all of our neighbors, we have several for different purposes. Poisonous snakes, bears, mountain lions, packs of coyotes, we have it all. Huge swathes of the US, by which I mean swathes larger than the entire UK, are still wild. People act accordingly.

The date thing is just a reflection of the way they speak and say dates. They always say the month first, so when you hear things on TV for example advertising a movie or new show, they say "out February 3rd" as opposed to 3rd of February. So that's why they do the short date the other way around.

@MrsKoala, my sister who’s lived in Massachusetts for decades now, says that the general view there of anyone who hangs washing on a line to dry, is that they are either mad or poverty-stricken. And very likely both.

[quote UnderperformingSeal]@Soubriquet
Why do Americans have their dates backwards?!

Why have month and then the date instead of what everyone else around the world does?

This. It makes no sense. I once did some work with a (European) global pharmaceutical company and they insisted that all the paperwork was dated in the 31-JAN-2021 format for precisely this reason because Americans are contrary 02-01-2021 means February 1st to Americans and January 2nd to literally everyone else.[/quote]
I once worked with an American lady and she did dates in the American way and it meant you could sort spreadsheets by date quite easily. First column was the month rather than day so things were sorted in month order which was better than all the 1sts of the month being together.

But if you name files correctly i. e. yyyy-mm-dd you can sort them quite easily, too

@LifeExperience

Thank you! I'm American and we live on 23 acres in the Appalachian Mountains. Only a fool wouldn't have a gun around here. Like all of our neighbors, we have several for different purposes. Poisonous snakes, bears, mountain lions, packs of coyotes, we have it all. Huge swathes of the US, by which I mean swathes larger than the entire UK, are still wild. People act accordingly.

Where do you learn how to shoot all those different guns?

Thanks @hansgrueber I'll tell DS2. He's always been obsessed with them being banned there

@MrsKoala
If you need to enter dates like that to make spreadsheets sort properly you aren't using Excel the best way.

A few other things-electric kettles have never really caught on in the US, because hot tea is not as popular. Coffee is very popular and most people have at least one electric coffee maker.

Why do Australians watch home and Away when they pretend its summer all year round?

[quote mootymoo]@PerseverancePays

We just bought a newish build and it has. All the cupboards you mentioned. Bigger house though[/quote]
I lived in a tiny terrace in Ontario and it still managed with good design a hall cupboard for coats and a closet in each bedroom and a basement. I think house designers here can design any old crap and still sell it so there’s no demand for better.
The comment about wet basements; there are ample solutions to ensure a dry basement, again no incentive for house builders to build better because they can sell their crappy badly designed, badly built houses all day every day. I realise I am sounding very grumpy 😡 but it really makes my blood boil!

@Prokupatuscrakedatus

But if you name files correctly i. e. yyyy-mm-dd you can sort them quite easily, too

Beat me to it

France - why are your rooms so badly lit that they get darker when you switch the light on?! I asked someone this and she said "ambience"

[quote GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]**@MrsKoala, my sister who’s lived in Massachusetts for decades now, says that the general view there of anyone who hangs washing on a line to dry, is that they are either mad or poverty-stricken. And very likely both.[/quote]
I know, even my English friends who moved to Portland say ‘only the immigrants hang their washing out’. Like it’s a sign of reaching a higher standard now you don’t have to. But when I lived in Vancouver it was a bloody heatwave and I had a 1yo so the clothes took minutes to dry and I had a lovely garden in the blazing sun and people were so odd about it. These were vegans who would only eat sustainable food.

I’ve got a drier, but if it’s good drying weather I love pegging my clothes out.