What was the first culture shock you remember having?

[MeiganMcSeinna6]

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

UKs GPs.
When I first moved to U.K. many moons ago I went to GP in London.
I was appalled by the lack of basic care and look of the surgery.
When I walked in , no coat hanger to put my coat on, the Dr pointed to put my clothes on the what looked dirty dusty muddy floor!
What would be properly investigated back in my native country, it was brushed off here in 4 seconds as nothing.
In my home country we have great care, the drs actually listen to you and you have coat hangers or senates available to put your clothes.
You also get referrals and can see Dr specialist in few days, sometimes even same day depending on the clinic- this is all Nhs.
Tests like smear test are done properly on a gynaecologist chair taken by gynaecologist so they have proper look and access down below.
When I went for my first smear test in the U.K. I was told to lie on basic couch where one side was on the wall.
The nurse used a ordinary torch to look inside me and searched for my cervix.
My legs were not properly opened as not gynaecologist chair where you put legs into metal holders, so she couldn’t not take the test properly and lots of abnormal cells were missed.

Moving to the US. It was nothing like 90210 had led me to believe and there wasn’t a string of boys climbing the tree by my bedroom window to chat at night. Plus I had a water bed.

Reverse culture shock returning to my home country after many years abroad in different countries. Nothing else has stayed in my head.

School to college to uni was an unpredicted shock.

I was bullied all through school by my peers and the teachers where crazy strict giving out isolation and detention for anything and everything.

I found college still extreamly strict, the teachers treat us like we where children but I made great friends really easy and there was zero bullying even though people where all from different lifestyles.

I was 20 when I started college (as school had me too scared to go back to the bullying before that) on an 19+ course so we where all 19-25 being talked down to and babied when I was an adult mother with my own house who had been independent for 4 years was bizaare.

Uni in comparison was so relaxed, the teachers where more like peers than control freaks but it was hard to intergrate and make meaningful friends as everyone was so different having come from all kind of backgrounds, cultures and places and people formed 'cliques' really quick so it was quite lonely.

3 different types of school and wildly different experiances - I attended 2 comps (switch in year 9), 2 colleges (1 for Btech and 1 for work training) and 2 unis as I studied 2 different degrees and it was the same each time.

"I've lived in this city now for about 30 years. It likes to think of itself as a diverse, thriving city. But then you go to places like Manchester and Liverpool (which are nearby if you want to guess where it is) and realise it is really a pokey, provincial back water. "

Chester?

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.

@araiwa

Walking out of Delhi airport

Me too! I was a teenager. Never been out of Europe.

Really interesting thread.

My first culture shock was living in India for some time with my mum when I was 5-6. I’d love to go back now and see it with an adult’s eyes!

@ActonSquirrel

Holiday to Rome at age 13 Public toilets often consisted of those holes in the floor. Rome of all places I thought would have better loos than that.

Las time I went to Italy I didn't see that, but no seats on toilets was common.

@Auntienumber8

The amount of alcohol that it’s socially acceptable to drink and just how much English events revolve around it. My family are Chinese and most don’t drink or like me just a very small amount.

This. I mean people drink a lot in my home country,but here is a different level. In my workplace, all our social events surrounded around drinking! Which is hard for me as I don't drink!

"To give an example, a few weeks ago my mum complained that a woman waiting at the same bus stop had tried to engage her in conversation, something she found weird and rude. To me that is now normal, but I remembered when I also thought it was weird and rude."

Wow. I can get not wanting to talk to strangers, but finding it weird and rude? That's quite extreme.

@igelkott2021 you can dispute there being different societal classes until you meet the upper class I guess? Yes between the lower and middle classes it's mainly about money but in the UK I find there's a huge difference between just having money and being upper class.

@slug omg you made me laugh with that story! I can really picture it and hear the sarf London accent

@MyFloorIsLava

Went to Bulgaria when I was 9, shortly after it left the USSR. Went into a shop and there was nothing to buy, row after row of almost empty shelves.

I was in Bulgaria about 15 years ago, staying in a hotel in a beachy tourist area. We got chatting to the hotel taxi drivers, and they were all so well educated, all spoke several languages, but they and their families were living in real poverty. I think the end of the communist regime there was scary for a lot of older people, who had worked all their lives and had been told they would be looked after in their old age, only to find out that they were left literally starving.

When we went to Italy on an orchestra tour we all noticed the number of rough sleepers.

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

(Oh, and all the street hawkers were black - the only black people there.)

The one that stays with me was when I first went to university, and reading the student handbook which talked about Alcuin College's interesting menu options: "ever had moussaka without aubergines?"

At the time I had never had moussaka at all, and don't think I would have recognised an aubergine either in the shop or on my plate

But then I went to a welcome event put on by the maths department and was offered a glass of sherry. I mean, it was a really weird colour, but it was the right smell so everything was all right again.

Going to London when I was a child.

I grew up in the London suburbs in a very average house, I had many friends from different backgrounds and was quite used to visiting different places from city to countryside so nothing in the UK ever really shocked me.

I think for me it has to be Marrakech. The noise, the colours and smells, the hawkers, chickens being slaughtered on the street, builders transporting their loads using donkeys and carts... it was truly a different world.

"The tiny homes here with tiny gardens...oh my god."

Compared to some European countries, I'd say the UK has more people living in houses rather than flats and more gardens, including many people having front and back gardens. Lots of parks in towns too.

My first dinner with a French boyfriend's family. I hadn't learned to speak French at that point. I was sat quietly in the restaurant while they angrily argued with each other at full volume. It was the kind of argument that would be talked about for years in my own family, have most restaurant goers gawping and management wondering whether to throw you out. As we left the restaurant I asked my BF what had happened to set off the fight. He loudly announced to everyone that I thought they were having a fight, they all laughed at my mistake. Apparently that was just how they speak to each other.

@careerchangeperhaps

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

I suppose that would be Alton Towers for me. So many women in saaris. It was so exotic.

Drinking culture when i started work. I am from a small religious community and most of my friends growing up were too. We drank but unless a special occasion rarely more than a glass of wine or a couple of beers on a weeknight and most of us would stick to soft drinks.

Then i started working and had an induction residential course with the other new starters. the amount of getting drunk of weeknights and pub crawls etc was shocking. Team drinks and Christmas parties are still things i dread!

Moving sectors to work in a Charity and discovering that some employers actually treat their staff well and follow employment law.

Realising that out of class of 22 students at uni there were only 3 of us who didn't go to private school! I always though we were quite well off growing up, but that made me reconsider.

Don't get me wrong, all my fellow students were very nice, we were a tight knit class and socialised a few times a week together. We were at quite a fancy university though, so I'm not sure if that affected things.

@Gwenhwyfar

"The tiny homes here with tiny gardens...oh my god."

Compared to some European countries, I'd say the UK has more people living in houses rather than flats and more gardens, including many people having front and back gardens. Lots of parks in towns too.

Houses are really small in the UK compared with other Western European countries though. I can understand why it would be a culture shock for people.

Taking about London, I got a culture shock when I went to Wembley. Horrible area.

Moving to the Netherlands from Australia. There were so many people everywhere and the supermarket sold horse meat.

@doscervesas

they sneered at me because I put lentils and barley in when making soup

They were idiots, then! Lentils and barley are marvellous in soup, and not just because they're cheap, filling and nutritious. They add a lot to the taste, texture and look of a vegetable broth.

I wonder if the same numpties would order Puy lentils in a restaurant, or a barley 'risotto'.