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.

Whereas in my head it was "Europe" so would be the same organised loveliness of Kings X.

ROFL - we can't be thinking about the same Kings X!

Many things, but the one that leaps out at me is sausage rolls. In every other place I've lived, sausage rolls are hotdogs wrapped in pastry. Horrible.

*QuiteUnfitBit

I think we all think the way we live in the UK is normal for the UK, and the people we meet abroad are typical of everyone in that country. grin For example, in my family, it's normal for children to go to funerals. When I was young and didn't have much money, I lived in shared accommodation, with four strangers in one room. Lots of people still use bottled gas here. etc etc.*

Definitely. So many people do live with many to a room, or family of 4 in a 1 bedroom flat etc too. Some of these are definitely the norm to some in the UK.

Experiencing white Western people who found my Indian roots of multiple people sharing bedrooms and if same sex even beds - weird and shocking. Much like the OP.

Their shock profoundly shocked me and made me think if India is all weird and strange, and if where I come from is rather filthy.

It isn't. India is lovely so I've made my peace with the shock horror you and your grandma shared a bed?!!!?!

Another German one: walking to the Hauptbahnhof (main rail station) in Frankfurt and watching a heroin addict shoot up right in front of me. I'd walked around Penn Station and Grand Central Station in New York for years and had never seen anything like that.

@glitters
I'm aware people do this in other places , but there is no denying it is more widespread in India than in Paris.

I'm from Poland and what you are saying OP comes as a shock to me Have not seen a well in my life. Well, have never come across a place like that in my life. People sleeping 10 in 2 rooms??? Where did you visit???? (I'm actually genuinely interested)

Late dinners in Italy, I was an au pair there for three months, dinner was never ever before 8 because all the families we knew there took their children to numerous after school clubs etc. They could understand how English children did anything after school on full bellies (or just being home at 5pm in general)

Weather helped obviously but first week was a struggle and a very rumbly belly!

Rubbish in Naples (really awful) - a mafia led problem I'm led to believe. The other parts of Italy were 100% cleaner.

No drinking water in Cyprus- had to collect big bottles of water from middle of town

*In the UK, those on mains gas are in rural areas of very low population density.

In Spain, my friend without mains gas lives in a decent sized town about 10 miles along the coast from Marbella.*

That's not necessarily always the case. I live in a rural village, although it's got a population of around 1500 so it's not completely isolated. No mains gas. My sister and my parents both live in (different) towns with populations of over fifty thousand and neither of them can access mains gas.

Why did my bold fail?

misiabella this was a small village about 50 miles from Krakow. Very rural. First time I visited there wasn't even a proper road in the village, just a dirt track. Children as young as 8 drove cars, the police didn't really seem to come round there. Drunk driving was very much the norm too.

Mommybunny I have a dirndl and even wear it in the UK

there is a country (the name ends with Stan) where , in 2017, women traditionally give up their first born child to their mother in law to raise

in 2017

my draw dropped, this is at 3 days old. My colleague told me she felt really unbonded with her child, I am not surprised

Living in South Africa, a few mentioned are not really that surprizing to me... but what was a complete shock for me. When I did come to the UK, phoned for something and the person said they would post it that day. I absolutely could not get over the fact that I had the letter in my hand the very next morning!!! Our postal system is rather grim, 2 weeks at least if you even get it.

Thailand was a bit of a shock. The young girls bought by the bars to sit there all night and prostitute. Also, the lack of the value of life. So many road deaths, and wherever we travelled, you just saw drawings of around where the dead body was laying in the road. But lots of them, not just the odd one here and there.

The way that German people are quite blasé about nakedness. At a campsite, two youngish girls just stripped off stark naked to tan. Bearing in mind we were working at a family orientated campsite where mostly children were swimming and at the pool, we were very shocked at their attitude when they were asked to please put their swimming attire back on.

In Turkey, the men kiss one another to greet but the women didn't. Also if out in the evening, men would dance but with other men, not with women.

Squatting toilets are my personal shockfest. I bloody hate them.

A reverse one from many years ago was my mother's experience as a Far East ex pat where, like all the other ex pats, they had a maid. One evening after she'd left for the evening DF realised he had to wear a dress shirt for a dinner that evening and it was still soaking in a bucket of starch, so my DM got it out and ironed it. Their maid saw it wasn't in the bucket the next morning and asked what had happened to it. DM explained and she point blank refused to believe her. She laughed and adamantly believed that this was some strange English joke because clearly white women were physically incapable of ironing shirts. DM had to show her the calluses on her hands from decades of 1950s/60s housework back in England before she was convinced.

'English children having diner at 5pm, and to bed at 6pm! I am still shocked by that one.'

That shocked me, too, and the kids eating separately from the parents. Then the parents will say, 'Oh, they get up at 5am!' Yeah, well, I would, too, if I were put to bed at 6pm.

Murphys, you are right, it is really common to be naked in Germany and the attitude is that you should just accept how God made you and get on with it. Quite healthy really. Although I do find it a bit weird if there's a row of blokes with their cocks out in the sauna.

I've had to NC for this, I've told it to so many people it will out me.

When on holiday in Sri Lanka, doing a scenic train journey thorough Hill Country. The non electric train was ancient and slow and people constantly criss-crossed back and forth across the track. In spite of the lack of any great speed we managed to hit and kill a wandering pedestrian.

We were in the end carriage by the guards compartment. The guards stopped the train, took the most disgusting filthy stretcher covered in dried gore from previous accidents out of a cupboard, jumped off, hauled the man onto it, wandered up and down the track for a bit looking for whichever body part was missing, picked up a few bits of er....the man, 🤢and brought him into the corridor of our compartment.

Having ascertained that he was probably dead they slung a blanket over most of him and on we went. 😱 His feet were sticking through the door of the corridor into our compartment, it was most surreal.

Got to the next station and two staff members ran alongside to meet us carrying another (equally filthy and bloodstained) stretcher, jumped on, hauled dead man off and plonked him on the platform, gave our guard the empty stretcher to replace the occupied one and on we went.

No police, no ambulance, no nothing. In and out of the station as quick as you like, as if nothing had happened.

They'd got this system off pat so it must happen often. Contrast that with the U.K. and the line would have been closed for hours or days for an investigation and everyone would have had to get off the train and find some other way to wherever they were going, witnesses asked to give police statements, the whole flipping line would be brought to a halt in both directions.

Truly another world.

Treacle it failed because it's two paragraphs. You'd have to put the star at the beginning and end of each paragraph. Only know as I've done it too.

I forgot the main one: communal wards in hospital.

There's a MN campaign to give access to water and food on post natal wards at the moment. No one abroad believes me when I explain what it 's like.

I went travelling in Cambodia and saw child prostitution several times.

In a hotel bar, I got chatting to an American guy (married, two kids) who went on business to Cambodia regularly and had a "girlfriend" there. She can only have been 12 at absolute maximum. Vile.

Thank you 1big. I didn't know that's now it works

I had a huge culture shock in England when I found out that you can shop in a supermarket on a Sunday morning

Oh and arriving on holiday in Malaysia, while still at the airport my DH needed the loo. He came back and announced 'Right. That is positively the last time I am taking a shit in this country.'

He'd been quite taken aback to find that all the loo seats had dirty shoe prints on them. Clearly even if you give a Malaysian man a western style toilet, he prefers to squat and if that means standing on the loo seat then so be it.

Wow lalegue that is truly shocking.

It's really sad actually as it sounds like it must be a very common occurrence.

When I first went to Japan and got on a commuter train with my Starbucks, and everyone backed away from me. Apparently it isn't done to eat or drink on the go. Also Japanese toilets!