What's the biggest culture shock you've experienced?

[Sacredhandbag]

Good or bad?

For me it was definitely the bike culture in Amsterdam - and I loved it.

But also, the over enthusiasm of shop workers in America, the silence in the streets in Japan, and the way Australians are so outdoorsy but can't handle the rain 😅

She meant Blackberries maybe? Don’t think that’s a weird thing to say.

@TinklySnail

I realised after I wrote it that obviously the cars were driven round it! I think it was the unconcerned and nonchalant way they just drove past this mahoosive cow as if it were of no consequence at all. Later on I had a very near miss with a falling water buffalo and once again the Sherpas were just so... nonchalant about that too, as if such things are an everyday occurrence.

Tonight, in Switzerland. I just wanted to buy two large baking potatoes in the supermarket.

I have never been able to just select and buy a couple of large baking potatoes in the supermarket. But everytime I fancy one it annoys me all over again.

asking the same question too especially as my mother is English so we spent alot of time on hols as children in the UK . not much difference but England had easier access to proper public transport more selection of shops and pubs opened Xmas day
edited as quote didn't appear about people saying Ireland is so different

To be fair if I lived there I would be unpleasant to tourists too. Yes I’m a NIMBY and proud 😂
Luckily we’re only getting fields of solar panels which is preferable to humans.

Miami - people mostly men, on huge motorbikes on 8 lane freeways without crash helmets. It terrified me. I can only assume that any crashes are an example of Darwinism in action.

Also Miami - a lot of restaurants only have wine and beer licences not hard liquor licences so in otherwise amazing Mexican restaurants the margaritas would be made with wine not tequila. Lime, salt and wine are not a great combo. Very disappointing.

If this was an RC church, they could only carry a gun if the pastor allowed the congregation to carry a gun. All the RC churches where I live have signs prohibiting guns.

Baptists otoh...

Thought we'd be adventurous and got the train to Dubais big mall, all was fine going but coming back was absolute mayhem, I guess everyone was finishing work for the day. I thought I was gonna die.
I've never been to London though 😁

Excuse me?

Same in Russia in the 90s! They had tills, and would use them to put your payment in and take your change out, but used the abacus to add up the cost of everything you were buying, and how much change to give you.

Also Russia in a fairly large city - everything in the shops being behind the counter. You had to first ask how much the item you wanted cost, then go to the till and pay for it, then take your receipt back to the counter to exchange for the item. Everything was bought like that - food, clothes, shoes, toiletries, electrical items.

I went to Moscow about a month after I arrived and was so excited to go to a supermarket where I could pick things up from the shelf myself, put them in a basket, and pay for them at a till at the end of the shop.

As someone who grew up close to Belfast, but lived in mainland UK for many years, moving to TX was like coming home - flegs everywhere 😉

Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong,1988. It’s gone now, but the density of living accommodation, the hazardousness of construction, the claustrophobia, the cleanliness of schoolchildren emerging from the tiny, dirty, smelly rooms, just blew my mind. Also the unbelievable level of racism in the American Deep South in 1981. I don’t expect it’s changed - but it changed me.

It's for the greater good.

I give them a wide berth!

This is still quite common in many European countries.

@MarieDeGournay

I was born in the UK but my family are from Wexford so I get it.

On a visit to Donegal I was genuinely amazed to see a local hotel advertising the Annual Hunger Strikers Dinner Dance. I don't think it happens anymore but the incongruity of a dinner dance to celebrate men starving themselves to death bemused me.

Carpets make the house feel cosy. I don't want to see people's feet 😫 I much rather they keep their shoes on please
I would rather have my house as opening and welcoming rather than people avoid coming as have to take their shoes off.
here in Ireland it's called having notions

Rural town in Kenya, piles off rubbish along the street that were just set on fire as there was no bin/rubbish service. Really strange looking down the street and just seeing multiple fires alight all day

Just buy two smaller ones?

Crossing the border from California to Mexico in 1998. I was already shocked by the amount of traffic and traffic pollution in LA but travelling into Mexico was astonished by the poverty. Women begging in the queues of vehicles of Americans in big SUVs going into Mexico to drink, shop, buy medicines, stuff to sell, on day trips and these peasant women sitting between the lanes of queued vehicles with babies and numbers of small, filthy children being sent to beg from the Americans. It was horrible. The border villages and towns in Mexico were poverty -stricken- hovels with people who ran up to cars selling all sorts- food, silver jewellery, raw fish, t-shirts, blankets, caps dirt cheap and as soon as you said no they halved and then quartered the price.
I was shocked when I saw them then handing the money to men who came along collecting.

I'm going to Marrakesh for the first time next month and I'm worried now! Were you alone? I'm going with DH and wondering if being with a man might make a difference.

And even in France back in the 1980s.

Coming home to Scotland after living in the US. The lack of service, the shite weather, the infernal ‘can’t do’ culture of my colleagues.

There were positives of course, but work was a real challenge.

In Italy I saw proper toilets, but no seats. On my last trip to Rome, they all had seats though.

Spitting in the street in China.