What was the first culture shock you remember having?

[MeiganMcSeinna6]

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

Travelling from Scotland to England after the Brexit vote. I have never seen so much casual racism in my life, and the expectation that you voted Brexit was just... it was really odd, and I was totally caught off guard.

I'm in my 50s, binge drinking was most certainly a feature 30 years ago and I wasn't a student. It was perfectly acceptable to have a few at lunch as well as then heading out straight after work (not even just at the weekend) It was called a straigtfae in my circles.

@bamboocat

Going abroad on holiday for the first time and noticing that women of other nationalities don't alway shave under their arms.

When I first lived in London none of the cool young women shaved their armpits. It was like a point of honour.

@Gwenhwyfar YOU are the one who started talking about university. I didn't mention students or university. The post I was commenting on just mentioned binge-drinking as a phenomenon. I simply said that binge-drinking was something I don't remember from 30 years ago. Thirty years ago I wasn't even a student.

[quote FangsForTheMemory]@Gwenhwyfar YOU are the one who started talking about university. I didn't mention students or university. The post I was commenting on just mentioned binge-drinking as a phenomenon. I simply said that binge-drinking was something I don't remember from 30 years ago. Thirty years ago I wasn't even a student.[/quote]
Wow. Why the shouting? So what if I mentioned university, I was just disagreeing with you that binge drinking wasn't a thing 30 years ago and I happened to be a student at that time. That's all.

Volunteering for a year in an orphanage in China. More of a mental scar than a shock.

@AlfonsoTheMango

Going from living in an upper class neighbourhood in a European country to living in a Palestinian refugee camp. On my own.

How did that happen?

My first real culture shock was at 13. I grew up in the States but did a study abroad exchange to Spain in the early 90s. When I landed at the airport in Madrid... It wasn't air conditioned! I had never been in an airport with no air conditioning and I just couldn't believe it, it was really hot. At that young age I genuinely felt like I had come to a developing country. Needless to say, I've had other, bigger culture shocks since then.

"I'm in my 50s, binge drinking was most certainly a feature 30 years ago and I wasn't a student. It was perfectly acceptable to have a few at lunch as well as then heading out straight after work (not even just at the weekend) It was called a straigtfae in my circles."

There was a drinking culture which included drinking in the working day. My DD asked me if it was real when we watched classic coronation Street and classic EastEnders. But the scenes that you see in every town centre and the need for doormen on smaller pubs wasn't around. Around 30 years ago it was still building. I can remember when my DD was around 3, born 1985, we went to Spain and British tourists were starting to become an issue. Binge drinking was in its infancy. The big change was the 90's and then we had alcopops. Which was marketed at young female clubbers.

binge drinking has been a thing since the beginning of time! Well, since 5000BC in the Middle East! I suspect you're referring to the term coined by a a journalist a few decades ago!

going to college in a major northern city. I had been born and brought up amongst the green fields in the south of England.
Being taken on an acclimatisation tour of the city, which included back to backs with washing across the street, blackened buildings, but most of all the public wash houses, where washing was boiled, scrubbed, spun and dried above a furnace so hot the washing was dry in 10minutes and came out stiff as a board, so it then had to be passed several times between the rollers of a rotary iron.
That was an all day event for the women - every Monday.
Gas lighting (in the 60s)

Motherhood was a huge shock to me. I never really thought about how life changing having an infant is. Those first months of very little sleep whole recovering from the birth process induced depression and anxiety for me ( my son was born 8 weeks early in 1997)

Age 18. Leaving my rural Californian beach town to live in Tokyo (arriving in January of '91). Very depressing experience overall. I did all I could to make it right but I was there for work (which was awful... overworked and underpaid and too young to cope with the demands and language barrier). But on weekends, I took in the culture, hung out with friends, saw the sights, and tried to make the best of it but still, I couldn't really snap out of how lonely I felt.
One morning, on the way to work, I finally had that glorious experience of getting shoved onto my train by a professional pusher and THAT was the moment. I think that really was my acute 'culture shock'. I remember just breaking down crying thinking, "What the actual, complete and utter fuck am I doing, living in a society that pays people a wage to treat people who allow themselves to be treated like cattle???"
I was young and idealistic. I wouldn't give a shit now. Actually, I'd just get all grizzly and snarly and probably go for their white gloves with my teeth or something stupid, then laugh about it over a slap-up hibachi dinner (if I escaped arrest). Middle age has its pluses.

Going on holiday to Tunisia, aged 12. We’d mainly been on camping holidays in the U.K. but had been to France & Portugal.
Tunisia was obviously completely different. Grown men followed me around everywhere, asking my dad how many camels for me. I remember being in my costume on the beach and having a group of men near me. I didn’t understand at all. An older teenage boy (17/18 maybe) used to wait for me to come out of the hotel room..12 years old. Looking back, how wrong that was.

@imjustsoworried

Travelling from Scotland to England after the Brexit vote. I have never seen so much casual racism in my life, and the expectation that you voted Brexit was just... it was really odd, and I was totally caught off guard.

I live in England and only knew one person who voted for Brexit. Nice little remain voting Libdem voting bubble, where I live. The result of the 2019 election was a genuine shock.

You went to the wrong part of England...

@MissMarplesGoddaughter being exposed to the middle class when I'd grown up on a council estate in a North Eastern city.... I just didn't know people like that really existed. The ‘posh’ friends I had from secondary school (nicer houses, parents with more money etc.) weren’t really at all in comparison. The students were just so privileged, plenty of financial support from parents, they all went skiing at Christmas break etc.

Now I’m older and have a decent job myself I’m very much aware of how different my upbringing was!

Really interesting thread!

Going to grammar school from a working class home. Why was I given a fork as well as a spoon to eat my pudding.

Going to visit relatives in Texas and got chatting to the bin men who ‘loved my accent’.
American relatives were aghast that I had talked to mere garbage collectors. I was shocked because I thought that USA was supposedly a classless society. I’ve never experienced such prejudice in my 60 years living in U.K.

MaMelon N.E Scotland is freezing and i do not know how you manage to understand the locals i will never know. As for taking the mick out of your accent, it works 2 ways, i have lived all over England and have had the mick taken out of me because of my accent. I have also been called a sweaty sock, Yes it is ignorance

French campsite toilets in the 1980s which were just holes in the floor that you aimed at.

I came 25 years ago and are still shocked with the class obsession in this country. The resentment, the cliches, the snobbery from all sides btw.

Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g

Re making lentil soup - the girls who sneered at lentils and barley were from affluent homes in the home counties. One was a doctor's daughter. It's many years ago and I still remember them for their smugness about everything.
They thought lentils and barley were stodge and did you no good.
They've probably changed their tune now.

Coming from a working class background in a deprived area and going to one of the best academic achieving grammar schools in the country.

Most of my new school friends came from privileged backgrounds and had a private primary school education. They lived in big detached houses with swimming pools.

They never got part-time jobs as their parents would fund everything for them, they had BMWs bought as their first cars. (They were also the ones who would drink and take drugs behind their parents back as teenagers.)

Going to a friends during school dinner break and her mum was drinking a can of lager and was definitely on her way to being drunk, My mate wasn’t fussed but my I was so shocked and I was a bit nicer to my Mum ( for at least 1 evening)