Biggest cultural shock you have come across?

[hibbledobble]

What have you encountered while travelling that was your biggest cultural shock?

I'll go first: in Poland I saw families/extended families living 10+ in a 2 bedroom home. The concept of having a bedroom or even a bed to oneself is seemingly unheard of. Everyone sleeps in different beds each night, and beds are often shared. Having visitors in this set up is no problem either: everyone just rearranges. Water also came from Wells, lots of homes had no bathrooms. Ovens were these metal beasts that were plugged into the mains.

@unlimiteddilutingjuice I read that with so much interest, owe and intriguing. I could read the book.

Seeing the Forth Bridge for the first time. It's pink!! I'd only ever seen B&W photos as a kid and assumed it was battleship grey.

Wetsthefinger It depends where you go but here in Yorkshire most people are chatty and like to pass the time of day with each other, it's really nice! Barely spoke to another person when I was in London though despite being surrounded.

My mum's mum was German and I agree we are a bit lax about nudity. I wouldn't go to the extent of happily stripping off in public/at the pool/changing rooms etc, but have no issues between mum and me if that makes sense. Eg, we are the same sock size so if I've run out of socks I wouldn't think twice about wandering into her room starkers to do so. I think this shocks a lot of people - there was a discussion (don't ask me how) about privacy etc and this cropped up and people were horrified.

The loos in France were shocking (hole in ground)
The driving in Malta, where the driver of the minibus would hurtle around blind corners of mountains and great speed, where one small mistake would send you hurtling down side of mountain

Kind of a culture shock but I hate seeing men/women with guns about. Not just the public (although I'd hate that) but also armed police/the army in real life, at airports etc. I think in this country it's so rare to see a gun that to me, the presence of a gun means there is the possibility of severe danger/a threat. It may be me being odd, but the presence of men with guns in airports doesn't reassure me as they are there to protect me. It makes me uneasy that there is the need for this kind of protection in the first place (perhaps naive, but guns just make me wary). I think I'd be a nervous wreck in America given how common gun ownership is.

Things that confused me as a child on holidays abroad - bidets, and the fact that we couldnt drink the water (not that I liked water, but remember parents pouring bottled water into the kettle/my cup of squash and thinking it was odd). Also that German family didn't have double beds but was two singles together, something that mam assured me was normal.

Also perhaps stating the obvious but how busy London was. We went during the tube strike (daft) and public transport was a nightmare. All sense of queuing went right out of the window and you had to shove to get on a bus. As we were a big uni group we had to stick together which meant like it or not we had to fight to get on the bus.

In Paris - getting the shutlebus from disney park to hotel and seeing grown men and women push in front of children and women with prams to get on the shuttle bus. Terrible, I thought.

Yes we had to buy a mattress from a special website because I didn't want a gap or to buy the stupid little bridge thing to join them.

I forgot to say that I've got used to seeing policemen with guns but after the recent London attack they upgraded to machine guns and that alarmed me, as do the military type police in France. They've gone back to handguns now. Actually I noticed one of those money transfer security people the other day carrying a gun in a holster. I don't feel endangered by the police having handguns because I know how well they are trained and how reluctant they are to use them. It's nothing like the stories you hear from the USA.

Reverse: walking into an Afro-Caribbean barber's to get my son's hair cut and being refused service. I'd never experienced racism before that.

Is your son white? If so, it's not racism - it's just very different hair to cut, requiring different scissors and razors. Try walking into pretty much any high street hairdressers in the UK as a woman with an Afro - I'd say 9.5 times out of 10 they'll tell you they can't touch it.

Of course if there were other factors that led you to think they were discriminating against you then ignore me - just offering up a possible reason!

No I think she is white and her son is mixed race or at least that's what the post suggested.

Being on a 5* holiday in the Dominican and driving past the local tip that was alive with children searching through the rubbish, as a mum that was the worst experience ever.
Holidaying in Miami rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous!!!!!!!! Getting lost and finding that barely 5 mins from the airport there was a whole different world of slums built on the banks of a river.

As a child in France: hole in the floor loo

As an adult in New York: seeing loads of adults without tattoos (where I live in Canada more people under 40 seem to have them than not); no visible homeless (wall to wall homeless addicts in some parts of my city - it's very sad but we're also sadly a bit used to it, in a visual sense at least).

Moving to the UK: we've just bought a new appliance - what do you mean there's no plug?
Washing up bowls - a bit mystifying to the non-British brain.
People just dropping by! Good god. No-one does that where I live. I got to like it, but always slightly surprised me.

When I lived in the U.K., over 20 years ago, people were more open about being racist and anti-Semitic than I was used to. Not that there was more racism, just that people did not give a shit if you thought they were nasty about Jews or didn't want their daughter marrying a dark foreigner.

Just how gorgeous much of Britain is - the architecture and the landscape. Sure there's grim bits, but overall I was in constant happy amazement at how lovely it is.

Moving back to Canada: no-one ever has a moan about work, partners, general annoyances. You must adhere to national cheeriness standards. You also must be committed to achieving and make out that your crap job is your calling. I suspect Americans might go in for that as well.

Having to relearn Canadian vocabulary. Still slip up there w some words.

I worked in an ESL college for a bit. We had to have visual signs as to how to sit on a toilet and also to put the paper down the toilet bowl, not wee and poo stained paper all over the floor (ffs, how does that even work wherever they were from?)

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia. I always thought it was a lovely sunny, wholesome kind of place. Sadly disappointed

Is feeding your kids an early evening meal then partners eating at 8:00 or later common in England, or is it a class thing? My kids grandparents would eat at 8:00 or 8:30 and it was a real shock to me as I'm gasping for food by 6:00. When we lived there it was pre-kids, so I was never sure if it was more usual than not to feed the kids then adults eat later?

soldiers with guns and bayonets on street corners when I was about 12, I (unsurprisingly) found it really intimidating.

The Germans

I moved back to a small English town from living in Scotland, and I still find the wall of inexplicable silence even mid conversation very odd. The sort of depressed shutting down when people start to connect and realise they might like each other.

I've been openly called mad and crazy just for starting or maintaining conversations with people I've only just met, and an observant knowing normal Scottish sense of humour is positioned as upsetting, rude, disrespectful, and problematic. I still don't understand negative politeness, where looking at the floor, not making eye contact, psychologically disappearing in plain view and then apologising for being ten feet away and noticing each other very very weird.

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia.

I did think that when I went but then thought about how it's legal to sell your kidneys, eggs, sperm etc in the UK. I don't see why it should be illegal for women to sell sex of their own free volition and regulation is good for them.

Ive never heard of people standing on toilet seats in the UK!

It happens in London and other bibig cities more than you'd think. I've seen a few signs in recent years, illustrating how to sit. We have people here from all round the world so it's inevitable that people are going to bring their own cultural norms with them. If people come from a very different culture, the chances are they genuinely don't know how to use a toilet properly. And you do often get comments, as seen earlier in this thread, about British people being confused by Japanese loos, or not knowing how to use a bidet, so it does work both ways round.

Mind you, one of the biggest culture shocks I've had since joining MN is the numbers of (presumably mainly British) people who are fucking neurotic about loos - hovering above seats, covering the seat with paper, refusing to touch the cubicle door with bare hands, holding on for hours rather than risk using a public toilet, complaining when workmen use their loo etc. Fuck knows how some of these people would cope with a foreign holiday. I actually started a thread about it: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/2876592-A-thread-for-those-of-us-who-use-toilets-normally

That the DC are growing up in a region awash with guns, and DS1 thinks nothing of high fiving soldiers and policemen who are armed to the teeth. He was scooped up by a guard a few weeks ago who rested DS1 on the butt of his gun. Not cool with that being the new normal.

The fire brigade uniforms in Ecuador. Anyone remember that pink camouflage that was trendy for 30 second in 2005? That's the fire officers' uniform in Ecuador.

www.lanesisland.com/news/firemen.jpg

The red light district in Amsterdam was a massive shock. Seeing women put on display as if they were products was weird.

How prevalent legalised prostitution is in Australia.

I did think that when I went but then thought about how it's legal to sell your kidneys, eggs, sperm etc in the UK. I don't see why it should be illegal for women to sell sex of their own free volition and regulation is good for them.

So you say, I'd rather there wasn't any prostitution around at all though.

ShoutOutToMyEx as BertieBotts says, my son is mixed race and has Afro hair. I'd taken him to that barbers many times before for a haircut but this time it was a different barber on his own and he point-blank refused to do it.

When I went to the house of a friend of my ILs who lives in an ex British Colony and was served tea by her maid who knelt in front of me to hand me the cup and saucer. I've genuinely never felt so uncomfortable.

I later found out the maid actually had a very good deal in comparison to many of her friends and the whole subservient thing was mostly for show but still

Not so much cultural but I was in Antigua for the cricket World Cup and they'd only just finished the stadium, there were absolutely massive rocks all over the place but they wouldn't let you keep the lid to your bottle of water in case you threw it!

BertieBotts

Similar here in Finland - DD's nursery takes the children for trips about once a week, no word to parents beforehand, they go down to the lake to float wooden boats that they make or explore the forest.
The school she starts at this Autumn has no fences or walls around it except for at the bottom of the playing field to prevent balls going onto the road. When I used to pick OH's little sister up from a different school occasionally no one questioned me when she went home with me, even though they had no idea who I was.