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 😅

I was taken aback when I went to Poland. The public were very different to UK - no one said good morning/smiled etc, I was a bit taken aback. However polish were hands down some of the friendliest and helpful people. Majority spoke English, always happy to translate or recommend somewhere or food to try, all round just so accommodating and kind to me. I had strangers stop me in the street as I tried to navigate Google translate, when they didn’t have too. I love Poland 🇵🇱

Also they make the best potatoes ever.

To be fair you got the same in some neighbourhoods in Europe as well...

When I first moved to the Uk on the early 2000’s I was shocked by the carpets in bathrooms

New York- so big bright and lavish but then people sitting on the ground shooting up, and just so many people sleeping rough. Just so sad- the words American dream make me feel sick. There was a homeless veteran with no legs and I told my son to give him 20 dollars. He said sir are you sure your parents are ok with you giving me so much money so we went over and he thanked us over and over again and kept saying ‘god bless you’.

Not time travelling, but this was 20 years ago. The hospitals were so old fashioned compared to those in my native country.

Funny southerner isn't funny

Being from Ireland, the way everyone else in the world does wakes & funerals seems odd to me. …and then realising everyone else thinks we’re weird for the way we do it Lol

No, Switzerland on a Saturday night 😂

Did the Swede get a second date?

Visiting china 38 years ago

the steam train ride for 2 days, arriving in Beijing and all the bicycles. The food or lack of food. Standing waiting in a station and people queuing almost to search the litter bin for anything useful to them.

the toilets without doors was the biggest culture shock. I found that bizarre, especially since I was Caucasian so attracted a crowd 🙈
its the only time in my life I’ve had about 6/7 woman watching me pee

Re children’s parties in Dubai? Well. There were a few before I realised how things were done. It was in the 90s while we were living there. I’ll just talk about the first one!
5 year old. Class party. In a mall. For a Lebanese kid. I had two other small children so thought I would drop off the party guest and take the other two off for two hours or so and then come back and collect.
We were ushered in to the venue which was a restaurant overlooking Ski Dubai. I handed over the gift which was some sort of dinosaur toy about £12.
All the other people were there dressed up nicely and sitting at tables. Whole families of mum and dad and their other children. It was clear we were all expected to remain there and have a meal.
So it was a table service meal for about 60 people. No games. The children just ran about followed by a host of maids (who didn’t sit down or eat). There was a magnificent cake at some point. It went in for hours and I felt scruffy and exhausted in my flip flops and shopping outfit!
Then there was an opportunity to leave and the host handed out the ‘party bag’ which was a big bunch of balloons with the party kid’s name on - tied to a gift which was the same dinosaur toy I had bought!
I was mortified!
To be fair that was the worst one and the parties varied depending on the nationality of the hosts, but the maids, the glamour and the expectation that parties included all the adults were pretty standard. And some of the gifts were nuts. Like £100 things.

I once had that same Lebanese kid over for tea after school and their mum sent him in a car with TWO MAIDS. She was training up the 2nd one. Or maybe she didn’t trust her precious boy with the weird English family! So awkward.

Fair enough but I’m talking about highway barriers and bridges and sides if buildings and it looked bloody awful with the open land behind with native trees and landscape.

this was not artistic graffiti, it was grotty graffiti, I can tell the difference between intentional and vandalism.

In eastern europe babies and new mothers have to stay in for a minimum of 40 days. Also hardly any highchairs in restaurants!
The better one is a coffee machine every few yards in the streets.

Maybe that explains once while I was queuing in the toilets at York train station there was a woman of Chinese appearance having a poo in a cubicle with the door wide open. She wasn’t bothered and was just sat there looking at us all in the queue!

Yeah, no. I was spat at in Marrakech. A friend recently came back and said never again - her husband had to order/ask everything otherwise they ignored her. Perhaps this only happens to the 'disrespectful' women

Were they concerned that they were eating too much or too little?

When I moved countries being able to walk home late at night without worrying, being able to eat out in a restaurant by myself without feeling people are looking at me refreshing

One of the biggest culture shocks I experienced after moving to England as a European was realising just how embedded the Church of England is in the state education system. Coming from a country where secular education is the norm and there's a clear separation between Church and State, I wasn’t prepared for the role faith plays in schools here. The idea of daily acts of worship or religious aspects being integrated into mainstream education felt backward to me. It was something I really had to adjust to when my child reached school age and I don't think I've made my peace with it yet, specially the facts that some schools can legally be selective on the basis of parents' church attendance.

Arriving in Costa Rica - late 1990s - bus to a tiny coastal village. It was to me like arriving in the jungle. Gorgeous wild rainforest next to a tiny quite ramshackle village. The noise, the smells. I felt so far from home. (Gorgeous country)

also Manhattan around 1998 - this was like New York of friends and I hadn’t seen a sky scraper before. I was gobsmacked

I hope you’re not implying I wasn’t respectful. I absolutely was. I’m not saying it was everywhere, The staff in the hotel were brilliant. But the men in the marketplace were awful

London.
How no one on the tube would meet your eye.

Where I came from (rural East Anglia) it was hard to dodge conversations, or at least civil exchanges about the weather) with total strangers on the bus.

When I moved to Canada from Ireland in my twenties and people thought I was rude for wearing shoes in their home. Then I moved to london some years later and realise people think that here too, I now get v frustrated when Irish relatives and friends come to visit and don’t remove shoes.

Canada was / is rather old fashioned in many ways, people lead simple lives in comparison to here, they are more outdoorsy, eat healthy, children run free but are well behaved. Women don’t plaster themselves in make up as much, I remember being surprised that a new friend wore wellies on a night out, I was slipping in the snow in my heels 🤣

Also coming from a disadvantaged part of Ireland and being shocked at the wealth in Canada, I used to nanny and one parent apologised for only having two bathrooms in their home. Then when I moved to london I remember being shocked at the true wealth here especially for parents who afford Nannies, the private schools, huge houses, live in cleaners etc..

I agree. Being from Leeds, I've searched the thread waiting for the person who first said that to elaborate, which predictably they haven't.

Only other mentions were about how it's a very friendly city and back to back houses. I didn't realise until someone at the university did a PhD on them that they're the only area where they remain, probably because they're quite spacious and very solidly built, nothing like the 'slum' perception - we used to live in one that was built from stone and even though we had 4 attached neighbours due to the design of the houses, including a flying freehold, we never heard a peep out of any of them.

Oh yeah this as well, I get reverse culture shock now when I go back to Ireland and everyone you meet seems to need an interaction with everyone else, people will make jokes, have banter with people they just met. In London you’d be called overly familiar. I do miss the friendliness and the ease of social interactions there.

cigarette vending machines in the middle of nowhere, so it seemed, in germany

Maybe they were just getting in first. As you can see from this thread there are several anti northern comments