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 😅

Turkey. I arrived in Fethiye harbour at 5am and I could hear the call to prayer echoing around the bay. This was 20 years ago and Turkey was a real east meets west country it was magical and I loved it. East and west appeared to live happily side by side.

With the reign of Erdogan Turkey has become much more east than west.

@HOTTOGOisastupidsong @Wexone

Ha! Many’s a time I have tried to explain notions to friends from the UK or US - they do NOT get it, no matter how I explain it. Especially our American friends - like they just can’t comprehend it

I'm assuming 'notions' is what my mum would have called 'having ideas above my station' . A saying I'm pretty sure she got from her own mum.

It seems weird that you would move to a remote part of our country and then comment in a slightly aghast manner at the remoteness It seems somewhat rude

Obviously depends where you live. I've seen drugs changing hands just once. I've only known one specific group of people who did coke. It's perfectly possible to live your life without regularly coming across many drugs apart from weed.

And again, there's binge drinking, but overall levels of drinking in the Uk are not among the highest in the world.

I suppose an after dinner walk would be in the cold and dark most of the time...

Marrakech also for me. I went with my husband and son in 2016. The staring, teeth sucking and spitting because I'm a woman, the relentlessness of the harassment for money, including being followed... Another level to any other country I have visited.

Well, the question was about a culture shock. And we moved here because it was remote. And you have no idea about my heritage - I moved here to be closer to my heritage and culture.

Ah sorry the emboldened 'some' was not me correcting you - I put it in in case I was called out on not all Americans being like that !

We go to the bathroom to blow our nose.

Which, when out in public in NYC is virtually impossible.

I have heard other foreigners comment on this. Thankfully, the younger generation seem to be drinking less. I remember going into town with an American friend one Saturday night and feeling so ashamed. Everywhere we went there were drunk people. And, of course, when people drink they lose their inhibitions and act in disgusting ways. There were fights, people screeching and swearing at the tops of their voices, a girl urinating down the side of a shop, groups of men wandering into the street and being bibbed by cars, etc. Horrible. This friend had always had an idealised view of England. He thought of it as the land of Jane Austen and Oxford University and so on. I think he imagined people spoke like characters in an Oscar Wilde play. Then he met the reality. But like I said, people seem to be drinking less. When I was a teen in the 1990s, people boasted about how drunk they'd got. To be so drunk you passed out was a source of pride. The young today seem more sophisticated and mature. Fingers crossed anyway.

It's a cliche, but probably true, that Brits drink because we're crippled by embarrassment, self-consciousness, poor social skills, emotional repression and an outdated class system. I am often struck by how much better people behave in France and Italy and Spain. The thing I most admire about the French is that they manage to be so classy without having a class system.

i know its been done to death but I think it's unwelcoming. fine for you to change to slippers but no to guests. we were only out last weekend with friends hadn't seen in ages and we all disused how no one visits anymore even when you ask permission. I would rather my house be warm and welcoming including not taking shoes off - I don't care really about ut getting dirty it can be cleaned but a surprise visit will boost me up

My first trip to London in the 1980s when I was 19 with my work. Came from a small town in Scotland and had never been outside Scotland.

A friend knew someone who was in London and arranged with me to meet up with them in Oxford Street. I got lost in a busy street in London and tried to ask for help and people just kept ignoring me and walking past! Totally unexpected as in Scotland (at least back then!) people would stop and listen to you if you politely approached them, London just felt so rude!

When you have our own PM and Government constantly running this country down, and also into the ground economically, why would anyone have any pride in the place...

Our ministers care more about supporting non contributing migrants than they do the elderly, ex military and taxpayers. Evidenced by millionaires and those with the means exiting the country.

We are being led by incompetents and nobody is held to account for anything anymore. To take 10 months to issue a revised driving licence wtaf!

You definitely can do that in UK pubs!

Holiday in Sri Lanka, and various visits to ancient sites that were built between 3000 and 5000 years ago. It was the realisation that the engineering of canals, citadels, temples and cities - often still in place and still used - was easily the equivalent or better than anything made by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks or Romans. Completely turned my European-centric brain around, and I felt quite ashamed of my parochialism.

The biggest culture shock for me was returning to England in my late teens after a few years living abroad with my parents. I was gobsmacked at how openly racist, bigoted and misogynistic the general populace was. I don't think it has improved much, some 40 yrs later to be honest.

something like that all right. it's more taken the piss now between friends. 😅
bit taking off shoes is very rare here in people houses

Stopping in India on a long haul flight as a child in the early 80's, with thousands of people there... seeing ladies sitting on the floor in the toilets selling squares of paper...and emaciated cats roaming round.

Someone who measures everything by 'distance from London' probably shouldn't live in the countryside lol.

In Ireland at my father in law's funeral. Sat in the undertakers and seemed like the whole town, around 400 people, shook my hand and expressed condolences for someone they'd never met over the open coffin

Yeah the drinking culture is mad and in my teens and twenties 1990's - 2000's being a non drinker essentially made you a social pariah!

France has a class system lol.

And I think Americans have a weird and unhealthy relationship to alcohol that is nothing to be proud of. (I admit I've never been there!)

I've been to Marrakesh. I walked round the souk on my own and I was fine.

Hahaha I'm French and the first time my British ex-BF saw me dunking a tartine in a bowl of café au lait he looked at me like I had a second head and asked me if I was alright.

They couldn’t just say no!

I used to joke that there's no point in teaching people the word no in Japanese because it's virtually never used.

The Japanese way of saying no involves things like tilting your head, squinting and saying "Chotto muzakashi desu" (it's a bit difficult).

The Australian outback, 2000. The casual, horrendous racism toward aborigines. The open sexism.The questions about how I, as a single female, could afford to travel from the UK to Australia for a short holiday.

I was so shocked by the racist comments made by staff in the airport I gasped loudly - they rolled their eyes at me. No shame.