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 😅

Going to Greece some years ago when they were in huge financial trouble. A woman crying because I had bought a small thing in her shop. A horse tethered to a moving. Car. The state of the poor, poor donkeys in santorrini having to move obese people on their backs. Bare tyres on a taxi in Greece. (No MOT!), being treated with barely concealed contempt in Turkey with my OH routinely spoken to first. I’m glad I live in the UK!

Not another country but I moved away for uni and was shocked by how poor I was and how bad my childhood was. I never thought I came from that bad of a background but some people were shocked by how little money I had and how difficult my childhood had been, I thought it was just normal. It actually made me realise I needed to go to therapy (not for being poor!, just the childhood part)

yeap!

out in the countryside it was poo with a view

but my first experience was in `Beijing in a busy public loo with squatting loo

Best: Japan
Worst: Morocco in the mid-1980s, travelling with another young female.

I was told " we don't have XX extra large clothes for you" in Hon Kong whe. I was a size 12

Sounds small but first time I went to America was Florida and the “plus tax” thing blew my mind. I was only about 11 in my defence.

Farm dogs running wild in Brittany.
Kind of charming and lovely when it's a friendly dog. Terrifying when it's a grizzled old guard dog.
We went looking for some Neolithic stones and an adorable spaniel adopted us and (guessing where we were headed) ran ahead and showed us the way. Like a tour guide.
Then he stuck with us all the way to a local pub, running in huge circles around us across fields and fields.
It was a really hot day and he ended up panting and frothing at the mouth. We got him into the shade and gave him water but it was worrying.
I'd be worried if my dog at home got into that state.
In fact, I would probably not have let my dog out in that kind of heat in the first place.
He had a mobile number written on his collar and I thought about calling it but I think the owner would think I was mad.
The numbers there to ring if you find the dog dead. Not if it's sat in a pub being a bit hot.
Hopefully he cooled down and trotted off home.

Why so? ....

I'd say for me my abiding memory is a kind of reverse culture shock as someone dt just said. Years and years ago I went to Kenya and stayed for a few months. I got into the rhythm of things quite quickly & I suppose whilst it was exciting it was as expected, not shocking, just new and interesting.

When I came back I was genuinely shocked at the UK - how much stuff there was everywhere, how shiny and new and bright it all seemed, and also how dull in some respects (the tube!). The vast range of products there were in the supermarket - just the abundance of everything really. It took me by surprise to find just how shocked I was to be back after a relatively short space of time. That and the weather of course. It felt very strange for a few days.

India - I hated the poverty, the chaos, the filth, seeing women on the back of motor bikes carrying obviously much loved babies wrapped in clean white shawls. Next to our hotel there was another hotel being built, seemingly by one man and his wife with the baby sitting on a pile of sand all day. They were living on site and when the monsoon came and everywhere flooded they moved up to one of the higher floors (no walls) and camped out there. I wasn't on holiday it was a British Council study trip.

Libya - before Gadaffi was deposed there was restricted freedom but I felt very safe. I had long red hair and was treated like a supermodel - by women not men, the men just sneaked a look at me but women wanted photos notably a group of schoolgirls at a museum. I ended up covering my hair just to be a bit more anonymous. Shops with a very limited range of good, the same everywhere - always tins of sardines, a dustbin containing brooms and a net full of footballs.

Albania - it was only 10 years ago and seemed like a country with a lot of poverty trying to move on from a difficult past. The traffic was absolutely insane and when we went to Italy afterwards the roads seemed peaceful by comparison.

France - being followed by men as mentioned above on several posts. I visited many times and it was always the same.

Cuba - I loved it but it was shocking that highly educated people like doctors had to work as tour guides for the dollar tips. All the women in the group were proposed to by random men all the time but it was all done in a lighthearted way and people were always respectful.

Back to Back houses exist all over Lancashire.
Infact they are still the predominant form of housing in many areas.
I had no idea they were only a northern thing though! 🫠

Sorry, was replying to a PP

Back to back houses join on to another house at the time so there is little light or ventilation. The usual terraced houses with a yard and a narrow road between rows are not back to back.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-back_house

Too little :)
After affects of the Khmer Rouge

Aww, that's lovely
Where are you from?

@Blue278 My niece teaches in Dubai and her DC’s birthday parties are like the Met Gala! Similarly on her last day of work before starting maternity leave all the kids brought in gifts for her which included designer handbags and the latest model of iPhone along with a diamond studded case.

@LavenderViolets , Had a holiday in Luxor with dh and adult dds, plus my mother. We had lived in the Middle East so were very conscious of the need to dress conservatively. All fine if we went out with dh - it was only once or twice that dds and I went out without him - there would be non-stop pestering!

In the Muslim countries we’d lived in before (Abu Dhabi and Oman) there was never any of this at all - a massive difference.

To be fair, I did think they were also still in existence in Lancashire and possibly in Liverpool and Manchester, although I don't know anyone who lives in one in those areas and thought that possibly the ones I'd seen were through terraces.

Anyway, the PhD paper is here if anyone is interested:

https://backtobackhouses.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/harrison_back-to-back-houses-in-twenty-first-century-leeds_goa.pdf

Oh that is so sad :(

Oddly Croatia. Everything runs early. We spoke to the service people and they said if you say a time you have to be there 10 minutes before otherwise you were late. We missed boats and taxis for that reason!

It's to honour them, not celebrate their deaths

Yes, that’s really bad actually. State, tax payer funded, selective religious schools should not be allowed to operate in 2025. Anyone wanting that kind of education should pay for it privately or send their child to Sunday school.

I can do without all that shop chat..

My Dad had an old army mate we went to visit, circa early 60s in Sheffield. On the wall in their lounge they had a cigarette machine, and all the neighbours would come in put the money in the machine and buy their fags!!!

We came from a poor background ourselves, so wasn't a case of we were better than them, but how bizarre!

No of course not! Your experience is true to you and I believe that! Yeah the open square was the worst place. I was with my hubby so maybe that made a difference?