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.

I didn't know Australia was freezing for 6 months of the year either. Is that all of Australia or just the northern...or should that be southern regions.

The Cuban people were so lovely.

They weren't allowed to stay in their own hotels when we visited 12 years ago. They were for the tourists.

If you were a professional person you got a beach shack. I don't know if that was cos you were allowed or you could afford it. These were bare, square utility looking blocks of concrete with no eindows.

We were in a group and it was suggested we gave our guides 25 pesos each. That was a months salary for the doctor

If you were needing to travel to one part of Cuba to another you would go to the main croostoads and wait. Then someone would offer you a lift.

Our guide asked the coach driver to stop and asked our permission amongst all the men waiting for a lift would we allow the only woman with a child to come aboard which we readily agreed.

There was definitely an underground network going on. We gave the guides ex girlfriend a lift to a neighbouring town. We visited Pedro'sex mother in laws house for lunch.

We went to a farmers house for lunch another day.

We were told by our guide that things were improving for these families. One had recently bought a TV set.

There's two form of currency. Pesos for the locals and convertible pesos for the tourists. In other words we pay more.

You could only buy your currency at the airport not in the uk. Goodness knows if we were ripped off or not. Cuban cigars seemed very expensive.
Can't get over the loveliness of the people though.

Yes, of course every country has a "class" "system" I put those " because in many countries there are no classes in the textbook Marxist sense even if there are very clearly defined strata of society, and because there is rarely a codified system as such.

I think what makes the British situation so fascinating is that it is so often based on tiny subtle markers that a foreigner might never notice (e.g. Couch v sofa v settee) and because it is constantly and imperceptibly changing.

Going to Hungary and there were no bedrooms, just beds in each of the other rooms (e.g. one in the kitchen, one in the sitting room).

One of my favourite sports is watching strangers in my native country and adopted country try to place me. As I'm a fully paid-up "citizen of nowhere" I think it's getting increasingly difficult, my subtle markers are all over the place!

I didn't know Australia was freezing for 6 months of the year either.

The area called the Snowy Mountains might give a clue. They have skiing round Jindabyne.

English girl you made me laugh 😂. That's so right. I live in Cape Town and right by the v&a too and SA is so random I love it.

Biggest cultural shock, however, was how grumpy everyone looked in London and the fact no one talked to each other, but then ten years on I kind of got used to it, so when I moved back to SA I was really surprised at making friends whilst waiting in a queue. Ha ha!

@lizzieoak I think what people find confusing is that fact that you can't penetrate the upperclass system when you are from the lower classes. However, the British monarchy can marry from another kingdom/royal Lineage from Europe and you would be part of them. This would exclude none white royals of curse.
The other thing is that in every class system is like having a whole language, sub culture, education, jobs, behaviour etc. Almost like a different group of people. Where they can always tell you don't belong even though you are as white as white. The way you hold your fork is as bad as being brought up by wolves and not knowing any manners and value of class.
The uk is one of the the few countries in the world where everyone is not born equal. You can never use that statement in this country and be correct. Mainly because of what the upper class is, the status of the royal family and how it's controlled.

I know countries in Africa with kingdoms. Some have to five major ones in one countries. Others have up to twenty or more chiefs dooms and hundreds of clans depending on how many tribes they have.
Within those countries, the class system based on royals becomes irrelevant. None of the above is used as means of testing who belongs to which clan but names. You can marry each other when within the same tribe and marry out too and you become part of a clan with no ranking that defines your future in life. Whether you will get a good education or not.
There was one I remember reading where all the women in the kingdom belongs to the king (sexist I know). But what it means is any woman can actually be royal and not be treated the way duchess Kate has. They might have issues marry another tribe and I think that is down to tribalism. Most of the tribalism I have come across which dictates which tribe is better has been down to who is president is and holding the power at that very moment. No one sees that as class. They work in a similar manor when in it comes to power.( who you can offer jobs, where schools/ hospitals, roads are built).

But if you can find your way to the top. That's your class. That's is why my cousin used working and having a job as a working class that everyone strives for. That's the most important thing and defines you as a her person. Once you have money, your accent does not stop you accessing things.

The area called the Snowy Mountains might give a clue. They have skiing round Jindabyne.

To be fair, most people from outside of Australia won't have heard of the Snowies.

I've also had company cultural shock..going from an open friendly company road mental paranoid gameplaying one where the second thought the whole world was like that. Awful lot

The area called the Snowy Mountains might give a clue. They have skiing round Jindabyne.

There are quite a few places to ski in winter on the east coast. Cross country at Lake Mountain, downhill and cross country at Mt Buller and Falls Creek.
Snow is less rare than apparently many people think.
They can't build properly insulated houses, though.

Cows wandering about on the beach in Goa.

The driving in Marrakesh (total chaos).

Even in the USA, there was a little old man who got chatting to us at Universal Studios and I told him we were from England, and he said "I was just speaking to another family who told me they were from Wales and when I asked which part of England that was they were offended" and it wasn't until I explained it was a different country that he realised his mistake but he genuinely didn't know . And then another time we were at a kiosk in the USA and I ordered some water and the girl behind the counter just couldn't understand my accent at all (Kentish accent fyi) so after 5 attempts I actually had to order my water in an American accent just to make myself understood!!!

UK: the drinking. It's like people get pissed by themselves. Not literally, but it seems to lack the communal side that is at the centre of it in other countries. Not even talking about France or Italy and the proverbial wine-at-lunch type of drinking, but even Eastern Europe, where people drink a LOT but tend to do so in their homes, around the kitchen table, and very seldom end up at different levels of drunkenness - in the UK it's often like every man drinks for himself. Not sure how to explain it better but I notice it when I walk by pubs full of City workers who just seem to be there to drink and who will only leave once they're drunk enough.
Voting like your parents without giving it much thought (I'm sure this isn't always the case but I remember many people in their 20s and early 30s just voting in the family tradition, whatever it may have been, and being totally unprepared to discuss the politics of the party they were voting for)
Unhealthy snacks. Children put to bed at 6pm and expected not to wake up during the night/at 4am
Ireland: people putting stuff in the PRESS. Took me so long to figure out what it was and bloody flat 7up as the cure for ALL ailments. And how many families walk around the city on St Patrick's Day despite it being an enormous, rowdy (but fun ) piss-up.
Central Asia and some African countries: if you were stupid enough to convert, say, $50, you'd be handed maybe 500 banknotes in the local currency because of hyperinflation so you'd be carrying around a literal WAD of cash. I remember having nowhere to put it and having to stuff it all in a plastic supermarket bag... Also lack of ATMs/banks (not very common at all in Central Asia), which made us wonder just where people keep their money - for instance if you have to pay rent do you just stuff a suitcase with thousands of banknotes and wheel it to the landlord?! For the life of me I couldn't figure out how they do it - banks and bank accounts just seem to be alien concepts. Everyone carries those little banknote counting machines in their pockets though
But also how stunning places like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are. No tourists. Frozen in time with the most incredible landscapes.

To be fair, most people from outside of Australia won't have heard of the Snowies.

I know I'm not the only person on MN to have read the Silver Brumby books by Elyne Michelle. They're why, when I went to Australia, it was the one place I was determined to go to, ahead of the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru and so on (though I did see those to.) I saw brumbies, though not silver ones. And I saw snow. And stood on the top of Australia.

@hibbledobble I didn't know this was cultural! Completely off topic but now it makes sense when our boiler man told us the house we rented out a while back had 12 occupants when he went to fix the boiler there twice, we thought they might have been subletting...

And how many families walk around the city on St Patrick's Day despite it being an enormous, rowdy (but fun) piss-up.

The rowdy piss-up angle is actually pretty recent, in fairness - when I was a child, it was a rather grim, usually extremely dank and chilly day, where you went to Mass, sang 'Hail, Glorious Saint Patrick', stuck a rosette on your lapel and went to the nearest parade, which didn't have mariachi bands and cool, dancing Nigerians back then, just a straggle of freezing majorettes and the local GAA Under Tens trooping along shivering behind a lorry advertising cement, with a waving man in a cotton wool beard on it. The only exciting bit was that you were let off your Lent no-sweets fast for the day.

And flat 7Up (or anything formerly fizzy without too many colourants) is actually genuinely good for helping get some fluid and sugar back into someone with an unsettled stomach. My DS had a violent throwing-up bug recently, and it was all he kept down for about two days.

I left Ireland a very long time ago, but I still have a hot press in my bathroom, not an airing cupboard, which to me sounds rather prissy.

I went to New Port (Wales) a few years back to get my passport renewed quickly. That was a culture shock for me!

Hi all,

This thread has had a couple of classics nominations and so we're going to send it over now!

I do think that the British class system is still alive and well and it stands out more starkly to foreigners than to native British. There is definitely a class system in the US, of course, but it is very different. For one thing, nearly everyone considers themselves middle class. For another, there are far fewer linguistic markers for class origin. And most important, it seldom matters what your parents did or what class they were from. A corporate CEO whose father was a mill worker is not working class.

There is another thread at the moment about people who don't like the word "supper." It didn't take too many posts in for it to be essentially about class.

@magicpaintbrush the water! :D

We had exactly the same thing. We even tried 'agua' as it was a tiny Mexican place and the lady was not working in her first language.

We just gave up and ordered 'wadder' and she understood immediately.

We also repeatedly got mistaken for Australians. We're from Yorkshire.

Thanks, LornaMumsnet - so pleased

I've learnt so much reading this thread.
It very interesting.

Yay! I nominated it too.

Has anyone read Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island?

I love the way he pokes gentle fun at the British.

I love Notes from a Small Island - and the US version too. As I'm British, I was nodding along to the former - and WTF-ing to the latter Love Bill Bryson. I met him once. He signed his book for me in Waterstones.

The uk is one of the the few countries in the world where everyone is not born equal.

I disagree. I think most countries that claim to be all about meritocracy are just more self-deluding about the issue.