What was the first culture shock you remember having?

[MeiganMcSeinna6]

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

Pink Floyd concert at Wembley Stadium in 1989. I will never forget the smell of cannabis smoke wafting down the tunnel as we walked in.

I live in a town, near Liverpool. The first time I went 'down south' and saw a newsagents advertising the s*n newspaper

I love England though , always have since the first day I landed and it was so green and lush.

Green and lush it is, to be quite honest.

Also like @tohaveandtohold stated, love that jobs typically looked down on where I'm from, which people are paid peanuts to do, are considered very skilled and specialised jobs here and they make money. As it should be. One of the reasons people leave from my country.

Going to the East End of London as a late teen to meet a friend who'd just started uni there. I came out of the Tube station into the middle of a busy street market and seriously thought I'd been transported to a different country as nearly all the people were speaking other languages.
I'd lived a very sheltered life in a rural part of the UK where nearly everyone was white and I'd never heard anyone speak a language other than English unless I was abroad or in a very touristy part of the UK (my only previous experience of being in London was visiting Westminster and a theatre on a school trip a few years previously). I had no idea that most other parts of the UK were multicultural

Going to Dubai when I was 17, stayed with a friend who's dad was an expat living out there. That was a real eye opener.

Also Cambodia, such a wonderful country but visiting the killing fields and learning about the history of the country was so shocking. We met someone who was from a family of 8; he was the only sibling still alive, the others had been killed by the khmer rouge.

British people are very nice and polite. An

The love of dogs and pets and that dog ownership is so common..Its probably changed in Singapore since I was a kid, but I am pretty sure doggy daycare is not common there at all. Oh and imagine my surprise when I first saw a dog on the Tube!

University. I’m from a small, run-down Northern industrial town, working class family, and went to a red brick University that has a lot of overspill from Oxbridge. Actually made me quite proud of having got there.

As a teenager going (from home in the south) to stay with a friend in Nottingham. The house was single skinned brick and you could see daylight through cracks in the wall. I was shocked rigid that that was normal

Very interesting thread.
First ever culture shock for me was aged about 8 or 9, (West London, 1980's) when i went to play with a school mate. C.

I had loads of other friends and loads of freedom to roam free (good old 80's!) but they all lived in the same bit of town as me, all the same 3 bed semi's.

There was a big estate a couple of miles away with a some tower blocks. I'd been past it loads in the car but never been through it/to it. Never thought about it.

C and I wanted a play date so much. I had to pester very hard to get my DM to arrange it. Turned out C lived in a flat in one of the tower blocks.

It was the first time i had to be 'taken' to play with someone and i was excited. We walked all the way and when DM dropped me off she told me i was to stay in C's flat and NOT go out roaming. That was very different from usual play dates.

When we got to C's block it was the very first time i had any awareness of my own situation properly comparison to another. It was the most peculiar feeling. An epiphany i guess.

I was very young - at first i thought
''why do people like to live here? It's horrible! Poor C. WHY does she live here?''.
Just confused.
Then it sort of sunk in over the play date that the people here were stuck here somehow. It made me sad and it made me think.

I spent the whole play date very distracted. The estate was a sink estate. Quite bad. C's flat was ok'ish. It had furniture and a telly and she had a few toys. Not many though. The flat was dirty. When you're 8/9 you don't notice much detail but i knew it wasn't right. We did a lot of standing on the balcony looking at the view. Seemed like C did this a lot. We weren't allowed to be loud or run in the flat. Her mum was in the bedroom the whole time and i found that very odd. (My DM was always 'present'. Buzzing about cooking or gardening or whatever. On hand for snacks ect)

I only ever went there once, and C's mum never allowed her out to playdates. We stayed friends at school but lost touch when she went to a different secondary.

@HotPinkTeaSet Same here. Brought up working class in a Northern town, then went to Bristol Uni - biggest shock of my life. I ended up having a nervous breakdown, and transferred to a Northern University where I had a whale of a time.

In hindsight, the other girls in my halls were lovely, but just had no clue about how the other half lived. They didn't get me and I didn't get them.

I'd definitely describe myself as middle class now, but still don't get some middle class things. Like utility rooms? And 'posh' food? - it generally tastes minging, compared to fish and chips.

Turkey the language barrier was confusing

I grew up in the north of England, visiting Scotland and seeing everything that was “British x” in England was “Scottish x” adverts were recorded with Scottish accents (which makes sense but I hadn’t really thought about it before) and how different things are.

Moving to the South and how differently people behave and how many more opportunities people have and how different attitudes are.

The North/South divide is real!

Going to grammar school from an Essex council estate. It wasn't the school itself although it was very different from primary school, I had read a lot of school stories and was prepared, in fact I would have had more of a culture shock going to the comprehensive which was probably a lot less like Malory Towers etc.
However I was amazed at the huge houses of my new friends, they were mansions in my eyes. I could not understand how they didn't think they lived in massive houses and were super rich. I didn't think my house was small, I thought it was normal sized - we had kitchen and living/dining room downstairs, three bedrooms upstairs for five people and a bathroom. They had multiple rooms downstairs, plus a bedroom each and one to spare.
I now live in one of the houses I would have thought was a mansion when I was 11 (most of Mumsnet wouldn't think it was anything special I imagine) and I can understand why my friends didn't think they were rich, it was normal to them and everybody they knew - I was probably their only friend on a council estate, and I wonder what their parents thought when they got dropped off at my house - but I try to also keep that 11 year old view so I realise how lucky I am to do so.

Gypsy horses being ridden all over the streets or trotting extremely fast in harness, in the Welsh valleys, with bare chested, yelling, aggressive men around them.

Arriving at Ho Chi Minh city a few years ago. The number of two-wheeled vehicles on the roads!!!! Wow!!! First evening I really thought we would never be able to cross the road!!! I read in a booklet in the hotel that you have to wait for a gap in the buses, taxis and cars and then just walk across - the bikes and scooters will avoid you...
It was nerve racking and I had sweaty palms but it worked. Absolutely terrifying though. I hated it...

istanbul when i was only 17 and on my own , it felt like another world , all the people , the baazars , noise , i couldnt believe it really , it took me all of the two weeks i had to get used to it , i was pleased to see pigeons there , strangely enough id just though that only england had pigeons and they werent anywhere else lol

Motherhood. Nothing can prepare you, even with an 'easy' baby

@onlychildhamster

When I moved to London and realized that the government didn't provide subsidized housing for 85% of its citizens. I come from a country where there is no stigma to living in government housing and it was a shock that council housing was only for poor people. It was also a shock when we bought our flat and realized there was no meaningful government support unlike back at home. The NHS was a bit of a shock too. Also that poor people could live in terraced houses - in my country, most people live in flats or condos so a terraced house was something to boast about as it meant you were a millionaire (though now many terraced houses in London are similar prices). Also that people could commute 1.5 hours for work,, you can go across my entire country in 1 hour. The food- you can get food from every country but the local food can be quite bland (though I love fish and chips and afternoon tea). That carrot cake is a sweet, not savoury dish (it is something completely different in my country). That people can go to school and live in the same area populated mainly with people of their background and ethnic group, my husband is 30 and can count the number of non Jewish friends on one hand, he exclusively attended Jewish schools which didn't allow non Jews, my country has ethnic quotas in public housing (only 90% can be Chinese, there must be other races) and even the schools can only admit 25% of students from their affiliated religious institutions if they are a faith school. That people take drugs (they have the death penalty in my country). That people cohabitate before marriage and it's so common (a lot of people have sex before marriage in my country but we just don't talk about it and our parents would definitely disapprove).

Basically not living in a nanny state where the government extensively plans your housing, your schooling, the people you mix with for the purpose of maximum social harmony is enlightening. Freedom is liberating but can also be scary depending on who you are. And that consequences can be unintended. I was so used to the perception of the government social engineering everything that even now I have to be trained out that the government has ulterior motives for stupid/unpopular decisions. Sometimes, I realize politicians can be shortsighted and foolish and pander to a certain segment of the population while sacrificing others but maybe they don't always have a hidden sinister agenda.

Are you from Singapore by any chance? Sounds very familiar.

I grew up in a small town in rural Shropshire, it wasn't very diverse. I'd seen a friend of my parents wearing her sari and a Sikh friend in his turban, punks occasionally but never any other dress beyond average countryside clobber. We went to Heathrow to get a flight and the colour, beauty and diversity of how everyone from all over the world was dressed was one of the best things I ever saw as a child. Visual overload. Glorious!

My second primary school. I was a FSM kid in my first school, dressed in hand-me-downs. It didn’t matter because so was everyone else. At my second it mattered all right. I remember it as my first introduction to class and wealth divides.

@Bathtimebillie interesting that you mention your own children's culture shock.

My youngest (7) hasn't had one yet. But about 10 years ago during a holiday i took my older 3 (11, 13 and 15 at the time) through Cairo off the beaten track a bit and i remember their faces taking in the homeless, the begging, the dead animals, the piles of rubbish. The rest of the day was lovely, and we did talk about it what they'd seen. It did them good. Big contrast from the sleepy village they grew up in.

@ItsSnowJokes yes.

Visiting large American cities. Streets filled with people sleeping next to all of their belongings, security guards stopping people sleeping in parks at night, young people passed out over bins, teens with no teeth, absolutely meth'd off of their faces, people screaming at passing strangers, and at absolutely nothing. Tent cities next to the world's richest banks

It's a fucking depressing place. No humanity to be seen.

Being invited to an English family's house for lunch age 6. Being served a large currant bun and nothing else!

I’m not sure I’ve ever had a proper culture shock but I do remember driving through Edinburgh early one morning and being surprised to see so many people sleeping rough outside the playhouse. I assumed they were homeless, but thinking back, they might have been sleeping out to queue for a show….

I guess the biggest shock/surprise would be how the government, society, Councils treat people with disabilities, particularly how badly they treat disable children and their parents. I always assumed they were pretty well looked after but quickly found the system is inherently broken.