What was the first culture shock you remember having?

[MeiganMcSeinna6]

high school for me , thought it would be all sweet an innocent , Wrong

Moving from Berkshire and an all girls private school. To Bolton and a comprehensive

Clubbing with now DH’s friends from school after we’d been going out 18 months (I was 24 at the time). Me posh kid, private education, Oxbridge and then RG PhD. They’d grown up on council estates and (apart from DH who was openly mocked for being at uni) left school at 16. This much wasn’t a huge surprise. What threw me was being taken aside because a lovely girl who told me how sorry they were for me. I enquired why and it was because I was obviously struggling with infertility as I hadn’t had a baby yet. She was equally nonplussed when I explained I wasn’t planning to for some time yet. But how then would I get now DH to marry me? Errrr….

"Sad to think that wouldn't be remarked upon by British children now."

My DF said recently that there were no beggars any more. He thinks that because he never goes into a city. It's true that you don't see them in the countryside any more - when he was young they wondered from farm to farm asking for food and a night in a barn.

I went to East Berlin before the Wall came down - I had been living in West Germany for a year. It was like going through a time warp and going back 30 years.

There was virtually no traffic, no people out on the streets, few shops, restaurants with limited (stodgy) options.

Moving from Northern Ireland to England and finding out that nobody had any interest in checking my handbag for a bomb as I went into a shop. I hadn’t realised until that point that Northern Ireland was any different to the rest of the UK - or that I grew up in the middle of a civil war where my dad’s job made him a ‘legitimate target’ by the IRA. Every morning before he went to work he had to check under his car to make sure a bomb hadn’t been planted there.

"the thing is there were a lot of Germans, French and Singaporeans on my course and most of them would have gone to state schools (as the private school sector is generally for expats) so it doesn't make sense either."

State schools, but not necessarily comprehensives though. AFAIK secondary education in Germany and France can be split into academic, technical or vocational high schools.

@Spikeyball

Going to university with a working class background and seeing the attitude of some students towards those who were working class. My biggest was having a disabled child and finding the attitude of some professionals towards people with disabilities and their parents, particularly of those who worked in profession I used to work in.

Totally.

@Gingernaut

Travelling from London and holidaying in an country barn conversion near Axminster, without access to public transport.

Realising that a lot of my holiday money would be spent on cabs after spending £25 on a bus pass and finding that a lot of buses didn't run on weekends and there were villages which had two buses a day.

I had no idea that people's lives could be so limited by what was an essential service in 20th Century UK.

At least you found out when you were young. 'Are there no buses and trains in the countryside?' was a genuine question asked in a recent thread about a person being left to find her way home from a holiday cottage. I've also seen incomprehension on here about a journey taking much longer by bus than by car.

Everyone drove from 17 down south.
We got a licence and then a car, paid the insurance.
In a city grown men don't have licences. Shocked.

@ThePlumVan

Definitely working in offices. I’d imagined it to be very nice and maybe a bit la-de-da (thanks mum !) Full of lazy bullies who bitch and backstab to cement their cliques and get rid of any competition.

A lot of jobs aren’t even that well paid so I’ve no idea why they’re sought after. Learning a trade would have been better.

Did your DM have a physically difficult job standing up all day or something? I do think some parents push office work on their children because it's physically easier and often quite good conditions.

@FangsForTheMemory

The universal binge-drinking is a relatively new phenomenon I think. If you go back 30 years or so, it didn't happen on this scale.

I'm not sure I agree. I was at uni 27 years ago and it definitely happened then.

First teaching job in a very deprived area. Realising that some families had so little or were so dysfunctional it was amazing the kids were there on time in uniform, never mind having stationery or doing homework. Many were expected to look after younger siblings while their parents worked shifts.

Second job in an affluent area was a shock in a different way. Most kids dropped off at school in huge Audis, BMWs etc despite the school being so oversubscribed they all lived within a mile. Most had several holidays a year to places like the Maldives and Dubai. Parents came to parents evening in suits. At the first school many didn't come to parents evening at all.

At the first school kids would bring end of term gifts, cards etc and write thank you cards if we took them on a trip or something. They genuinely appreciated what we did for them. At the second parents phoned up demanding/challenging all sorts of things and were actually very rude.

I'd say my current school is somewhere in the middle but teenagers never fail to surprise me every year in all sorts of ways (mostly good!)

In my home country all the entrance to most homes whether it's regular houses or flats would have very large entrances. Guests will spend ages leaving your home faffing around forever wearing their shoes, kissing goodbye for the millionth time and forgetting something which means there's always heavy traffic. To me entrances must be large as you do your welcoming there or say your goodbyes.

Here in the UK there's always a bottleneck in the entrance of most homes as terrace houses and flats have tiny entrances which was really odd seeing people just walk in with their shoes, I'm guessing it's most likely designed for that to just walk in! In my home country, shoes must be taken off which means a queue is formed outside my house in the UK trying to enter. No room to bend down as your bum rubs against the radiator or wall, no space to put your shoes, no room to leave your pram.

Also the water quality in the UK. Have you noticed when you used to go on holiday (pre covid) your hair would suddenly bloom on holiday despite using hotel shampoo? Suddenly you will have a lovely shine, natural locks you never knew it existed and then you will come back to the UK and wash your hair to find your hair going back dull and falling out. Also eating on public transport was a big culture shock and so much litter. In my home country we don't eat on public transport as it's seen as rude for the smell and mess it will cause and also in case there is poor people who can't afford food.

@FangsForTheMemory

School exchange trip to Germany in my teens. The standard of living was so much higher generally, and my host family - although working class - had a much more comfortable home than the one I grew up in. They drank real coffee out of a drip filter machine, a thing I'd never seen before. They had cake forks for eating cake. They NEVER drank tap water.

In my house there is a beautiful bean to cup coffee maker, a set of cake forks that I bought in Germany and a water filter jug (I don't drink bottle water for environmental reasons).

Me too. Germany in 1979, aged 17.

I lived and worked in a small family hotel in Bavaria. I'd been on an eastern Mediterranean cruise aged 15, but I'd expected that experience to be a bit of a culture shock.

I wasn't expecting how prosperous and comfortable German life was after growing up in my teens in Broken Britain.

I still think we should emulate them!

@Gwenhwyfar I said 'universal', not university.

@Mankini

Rural Indonesia - old lady's daughter asking if her mum could touch my arm as she'd never seen someone as pale as me before (I am the non-redheaded child of redheads). Getting stared at all the time in the streets for the same reason.

I had an experience in Egypt many years ago off the beaten track where girls in full niqab pointing at me for having my hair on show. I had full clothing but could see my hair and face - the scandal of it. A translator explained that they thought I was welcoming men by 'exposing myself'.

"Also the water quality in the UK. Have you noticed when you used to go on holiday (pre covid) your hair would suddenly bloom on holiday despite using hotel shampoo? Suddenly you will have a lovely shine, natural locks you never knew it existed and then you will come back to the UK and wash your hair to find your hair going back dull and falling out. "

Please try Belgian water. 100 times worse than the UK and that includes hard water areas in the UK. Water varies from soft to hard water areas.

[quote FangsForTheMemory]@Gwenhwyfar I said 'universal', not university.[/quote]
I know, but I don't think binge drinking was confined to students 27 years ago either.

Going to uni, going on my year abroad. I’d never before encountered rich people. So unsettling to realise how little material wealth my family had. Not that it mattered to me long term, but it was revelatory.

Yes to Germany - the wealth and relaxed parenting my West German friends benefited from - and then again to East Germany (post-reunification years).

It was quite bemusing to me to see how my German friends, many of whom had had school years in England, felt a lot of what they'd encountered to be utterly backward - carpets in bathrooms, instant coffee, separate taps (and yes to their tap water aversion). There was also sneering at the food (the bread in particular) and the small houses.

Then the general brusqueness of tone - the assumption (incl on the part of public authorities) that everyone was capable of being assertive enough to get what they want and if they weren't, tough luck/more fool them.

And becoming a parent in Germany, where it's all about self-assertion and independence and pastoral care is (or was - it's very, very slowly starting to change) simply not a thing in schools. But I know if I went back to the UK the petty uniform rules and overprotectiveness (10yos being 'far too young' to walk ten mins home from school alone) and pushing 4yos to read and the 'school gate' thing would drive me utterly bonkers.

Transfering from a very average, suburban, state primary to a Steiner school when I was 10.

Overnight, I was learning to write Sanskrit, perform Eurythmy and speak a bit of Ancient Greek. At break times we were allowed to roam in the woods and country park surrounding the school. We would often celebrate ancient festivals like Beltane or Lammas Day.

Mind. Blown.

Yes also motherhood.

It was like an emotional bombshell going off in my extended family.

I had been a younger sibling (and I'm certain that I was seen as a 'little sister' by siblings).

From the moment of giving birth every single one of them saw fit to advise that they new better how to bring my child up.

Didn't go down well with me.

I feel mother-blaming in particular is rife in this society and many people don't even consider the damage that is done as a result.

@Gwenhwyfar oh no I've never tried Belgian water! I don't think my hair would cope if it's 100 times worse! I live in London btw so extremely sorry if you live in a soft area but London water isn't good for my hair and never has been.

'knew' better

Moving from Birmingham - my class in school was diverse as fuck and my neighbours were Indian and my best friend was from Ghana and my teacher taught us Tibetan folk songs she learned when visiting plus all the rest of it, so much more.

To Torquay. White, stuck up, bullied me for my accent, for being ‘uncultured’ because I didn’t know X, Y and Z references and pull them from my brain like that from such and such books (found them boring tbf so didn’t commit to memory)