Expats, tell me what aspect or social norm of your new country was strange to you?

[AjasLipstick]

I am a Brit in Oz and for me, the hardest thing to get used to was Sunday trading hours being like the UK in the 70s.

The weirdest thing was how much less formal people are...kids are dressed very informally and parties for children never have kids dressed up in party dresses but in shorts and t shirts. I like it now I'm used to it though.

" But bits of Austria, and all of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary drove on the left until Hitler invaded and forced them to drive on the right. "

yes, and also in what is now 'the Czech Republic' because I was in a car museum there and the steering wheels of the oldest cars were on the same side as ours. I asked someone about it, and they blamed Hitler..

oh you said Czechoslovakia...really should read better..:)

In Japan nearly 27 years and there have been LOADS, as you can imagine

although either I have just got used to everything or it has actually got better recently...things like you can get money out of the ATM outside banking hours (the ATM used to be inside the bank and only open until the bank closed at 3pm

Credit cards can be used everywhere now, at least in fairly big cities (used to be almost completely cash based)

Obvious ones like shoes off in the house are really quite sensible.

communal bath etiquette can take some getting used to - you wash outside the tub and then get in for a soak (even at home).

Fireworks in the summer always used to confuse me (so used to Guy Fawkes night and being freezing, so it was weird to watch firework on hot, humid summer nights)

Being invited to someone's home used to be very unusual - you would always meet at a restaurant. But things changed a while ago, and younger people have "home parties" and potluck dinners etc.
Having said that, I have still NEVER been to my SIL house...

Trains are amazing because they really are ridiculously punctual - I think it even made the news in the UK the other day, because the train company had to apologise for a train leaving 30 seconds early
Thing is, it really would be inconvenient if the train left early - you expect to turn up at the station 20 seconds before the train leaves, board, and then be on time for all your other connections.

One thing that I still can't get used to is the way they officially "open" the beaches swimming for the summer season, and then "close" them at the end of August (when we still have at least a month of beach weather to go...). Nowadays people often ignore the official season and swim whenever they want. (actually the lifeguards are also only on duty until 5pm and you are supposed to get out of the sea at that time).
This doesn't apply to watersports, like windsurfing, etc. just swimming. (a PP mentioned the swimming pool etiquette - similar type of health and safety, I guess)

South African living in the UK. I moved as a young teenager so quite a while back!!

• crisps instead of chips
• trousers instead of pants
• Traffic lights and not robots

The first time I went into a supermarket here it was amazing, the conveyor belt moved your shopping up and they used a barcode scanner instead of typing the prices in by hand

Going to school, I was gutted that at break you only got to eat a packet of crisps and then had your school lunch, and not having a full packed lunch of sandwiches etc plus a hot meal at the actual lunch time.

Got in trouble at school for telling the teacher that Kevin had a bloody nose. Apparently I was meant to say his nose was bleeding

Cursive writing was not standard!

Sweetcorn on everything and I mean everything

Finally, waking up to a chilly misty morning and dressing in shorts and tshirt as the sun will burn through the mist and it will be a beautiful sunny day. This does not happen in Scotland, which I realised whilst being inadequately dressed!!

An Australian and I am baffled by UK weddings as described on MN.
I have been to any many weddings in Oz and they all follow the same format.

1. a ceremony

1. a reception with a meal, speeches, dancing etc. All food and wine paid for by the bridal party.
2. Everyone goes home.

I really don't understand the idea in the UK that there is some sort of food/drink based function straight after the ceremony and then later an evening party where less special people are invited? And people have to pay for their own drinks? It all seems so long and drawn out and leads to the awful ranking of guests into different categories.

tante lot of similar ones for me in Korea, weird banking practises, never going to people's houses, shoes off inside (which I love, even at work, we change to our indoor shoes), super punctual public transport...

A lot of stuff in Korea I dislike, a lot of it I am just bemused by and some of it, I prefer.

1. Group mentality - you don't really need to ask people's opinions on stuff cos 99% of the time, everyone thinks roughly the same thing on important issues. It is a bit boring sometimes because I feel that there's not always that much to talk about. Plus, if you step outside the groupthink, people definitely don't like it. Every girl has the same make up, every guy has the same haircut. Once somewhere becomes popular, everyone will go there. People think it's really weird to go to eg Mexico. Mexico is not a current 'hot place' so why would you go there? Vietnam is a 'hot place' so we must all go there. But when they go, they almost all go on package tours and stay in Koreans-only hotels and eat in Korean restaurants and never speak to anyone not Korean. Their sense of Koreanness pervades everything and it can be exhausting.

1. Everything non-Koreans do is a source of absolute fascination/ridicule/bemusement EVEN IF Koreans do the same thing. (Still very monocultural here - I literally heard someone say 'that foreigner has a HANDBAG' the other day - perfectly ordinary handbag, but cos a FOREIGNER is carrying it, it's something interesting and to be remarked on.) Speaking in Korean is proof that you must be the most educated foreigner EVER. You say 'hello' and they all fall about saying how smart you must be. It sounds nice, but it's exhausting cos you can never actually have a conversation.

1. On that point, being called a foreigner. I hate it. I hate that everything is divided into 'Koreans' - God's chosen and special people - and foreigners - everyone else who is not Korean. 'Do foreigners like eg Chanel?' as if all foreigners, all 7 billion of us, all think the same way.

1. Spitting on the street/not washing hands after the toilet - totally normal here and someone once said that people think that if you wash your hands, people will think it's because you were doing something DIRTY. I mean, what? Both of the above are absolutely disgusting to me and I will never ever get used to them.

1. On the other hand - once you are in a group, people are unbelievably kind. I mean, like they will do anything for you. 'Being in a group' can mean anything from a long term friendship to being recognised as 'Korean' or at least 'human'. Like I told a lady in a shop that my husband was Korean and she gave me a ton of free stuff.

1. Being able to eat out every night of the week for under 20 quid for 2 people. Really crazy and the food is delicious and often super fresh.

1. The public transport in the cities is unreal. You can travel around the Seoul metropolitan area for less than a pound and go to the mountains easily etc. Even travelling from one end of the country to the other costs about 40 pounds and takes 2 hours.

1. I was amazed at how much care people take with their appearance. They will dress casually, but everything always looks brand new, hair is always freshly cut, perfect make up etc.

1. Old ladies are fierce as fuck and no one messes with them. If an old lady tells you to do something, you do it. They'll yell at young guys for harassing you on the train (mercifully uncommon), they'll shout at vendors trying to rip you off, they'll tell you you have lipstick on your teeth, they'll tell you that your child is being a deplorable brat. At the same time, they can be incredibly soft and warm - they'll just randomly give you sweets or tell you you're beautiful. If you are ever in Korea and are having trouble, find an older lady and you'll be fine.

10. The service is unbelievable. If you order stuff online, it comes within two days tops. If you buy stuff in shops, you'll get a ton of free stuff. If you ask for a discount, you'll get it 99% of the time. You can order any kind of food, day and night and it will arrive within the hour - if you order Chinese food, it comes with actual plates and stuff that you just put in a special bag and leave outside and they'll pick it up, so you don't even have trash. It's SO convenient to live here in some ways.

Many other things, too many to mention really.

Regarding the grannies, do you get a lot of advice about appropriate levels of dress for small children in cold weather?

All sorts of advice some totally crazy. In the ex-pat circles we call them Oma Polizei.

Also an obsession about keeping feet warm.

If you sneeze you must be cold so put socks or house shoes on.

Oh and they have a basket of house shoes for guests.

Breakfast and evening meal are identical, bread, cold cuts, butter, cheese.

Bloody good bread though.

Loads when I first moved to Scotland!
I thought everybody knew a man called 'ken'
When first getting to know dh, he always used to talk about his 'Neebors'. One neebor did this, another said that. I had visions of him living on one of the biggest friendliest streets ever....: nope, neebor is just another word for friend apparently.

There are many, more. My family are Scottish as is dh and now our DC, they all like teasing me on a regular basis, despite the fact I've lived here for 17 years now!

Ooh and not locking doors, friends just walking in.
Kids playing outside was a nice one.

OP, you are an immigrant to OZ, let's leave the good ol'e Colonial-smelling terminology behind, shall we?

I didn't expect to find things strange when I moved to Finland 10 years ago because I spent so many holidays here as a child but I guess you view things differently as an adult so I was quite taken aback at all the little children roaming around without adults (now I love it), the utter casualness of the nudity in public changing rooms at swimming pools (now I love it, so freeing), and the difference in pub/bar culture - it's much more focused on getting drunk rather than being sociable (I don't love this)

Lived/worked in Tunisia once passed the being hassled how friendly and giving people are and how gossip is a national past time. But that meant everyone you met on the street that you knew you would stop and have a five minute conversation with. Learnt to not admire anything in someone’s house as if it was small enough it would likely be packed to give to you and always arrive a little hungry

West coast America the Hi how are you doing is just being polite they don’t actually know you took a while to get used to this. I though one waitress knew my dad and was put out he didn’t introduce me. Very friendly until something goes wrong then far more confrontational than British people tend to be

Australia that laid back attitud we were told to not rush everywhere all the time and get out of London mode when I came back here after over a year living in Sydney everyone did seem uptight

Wake there's no need to be so superior.

I have no issue being called a migrant. I am very aware of my migrant status and was talking to someone the other day and explaining that I am actually an economic migrant...no different to my Great Grandmother who left Ireland, dirt poor in the late 19th century to go to England.

I used expat purely because it's what's usually used on here.

Natsku I loved in Finland in my 20s (long ago) and one of the things I loved was seeing older women with normal bodies that had led lives with scars and bumps etc just walking around the changerooms and sauna at the local pool naked with absolute confidence and right to be there.

Scot in Germany. People say "hello" and "goodbye" to the waiting room, whether its the vets, doctors, gynacologist... Have found muself doing it now and worry I'll end up doing it back home!

You tend to pay at the end at bars (no idea how bar staff keep track in busy bars, and theyre so trusting!!) and things here, which also causes an issue when I'm back home and go to walk pff wothout paying!

Theres no proper smoking ban - gross! Even the smokers I know don't like that after a while.

A lot of people take table tennis and table football ("kicker") terrifyingly seriously!

All the shops shut on Sunday which took me months to come to terms with as I previously always shopped on Sundays.

As a Scot, this ones pretty major: vinegar on chips (dont get me started on the fact that there are no real chips here, hate fries!!) is seen as seriously weird, most places don't even have it or just have fancy salad vonegar, and if you mistakenly ask for it, people will look at you like you've just asked for faeces to be sprinkled on your fries.

Oh and the not saying please/thank you this is a peculiarly English obsession

Pass me the salt/pepper with no please and thank you

Took me a while to realise others were not being rude

Oh, and the "Pfand" system where you get money back for drinks bottles at supermarkets and things, that part is great, the part I have trouble with is that its kinda frowned upon to put bottles in bins, youre meant to just place them in the street near bins, they are gone withing 10 mins by someone who collects bottles for money, but I still feel really guilty doing it like I'm littering, and feel the need to loudly mention to whoever I'm with that it will be picked up by a pfand collector soon and is less risky for them than trying to get bottles out of bins. Just incase anyone thinks I'm littering.

@AnElderlyLadyOfMediumHeight haha, most supermarkets I go to don't do the self weighing fruit thing, but I got shouted at at Real the other day for not noticing they still did that 😂

Same system (panda thing) here in Finland JaggyJobby and I got told off when I first arrived for putting a bottle in the bin, found it really hard to force myself to place them on top of or near the bin instead.

It is great, isn't it Quantumblue? I see those old women and think one day my body will be like that, and that's ok, and then I feel much more comfortable with the thought of getting old. Especially nice now I've had two children and my belly, thighs and breasts are a mass of stretchmarks and I can see that so many other women look the same. And it's great that my daughter sees this as she grows up, so she knows what a normal average female body looks like rather than what's depicted on telly and in magazines.

I came to UK from Canada in '83 and as a student nurse I was shocked when the weather turned sunny and warm in early spring and the hospital grounds were littered with half naked people on their breaks suntanning..totally understand it now though.

It was normal when I grew up in Canada to pop into friends unannounced and I had to curb myself when I came here. Not sure that's normal now in Canada or not tbh .

I was shocked at the way grammar is spoken so differently in certain dialects of the Uk.

Also shocked at the class system and how mean inverted snobbery is.

In German part of Switzerland, but a while ago, I believe some things are more relaxed now.

Most people lived in apartment blocks. There was a communal washing machine/drying area. No one had their own. You were allocated an hour once a week to do your washing. This could not be changed. You had to clean and dry washing machine and dryer after use.
Crafts with kids was a BIG thing. You were a bad mum if you did not do crafts with your kids. And it was always the mum. Even small village shop had a very wide display of crafts materials to buy.
Following the rules to the letter. So no crossing across the red light even if there was no traffic.
Strict recycling rules. So all paper had to be bundled up into a very near parcel and tied with string to be collected. No just throwing it into a recycling bin or an untidy parcel.
Children had a LOT of freedom. Nursery opened doors at the end and children just left. If you did not want your 3 or 4 year old to walk home by themselves it was your responsibility to be there. Some children did walk home themselves. Watched in a part a class of about 4-5 year olds running about as the two staff talked amongst themselves. Some of the kids went outside the park gates. When it was time to go the staff simply shouted they were going and left. A few minutes after the staff had left, kids were still running out the part to catch them up.
You don't question teachers unless it is something very very serious.
Families and friends from school socialise as adults. It is very difficult to make friends as people socialise with those they have known all their lives. You basically had to make friends with other foreigners.
People largely stayed where they had been born. Moving away even 20 miles away was a BIG DEAL.
Very very little processed foods. You cooked from scratch.
No childcare outside of family, which meant as a foreigner you could not work until kids started school at 7. And even then they came home for lunch and a siesta.
Siesta.
Shops closing for siesta and all day Sunday.
The bureaucracy.

Moved to Montréal.

Biggest shocker was the language - totally French outside of Montréal.

Kissing people on both cheeks all the time.

Native Canadians have the ability to a. Walk on ice without slipping and b. Be outside without getting bitten to death by bugs in the summer.

Going out for breakfast is a huge deal, and really popular. Britain would do well to adopt that tradition.

People don't get pissed and lairy all the time.

People Cook from scratch.

People are slimmer and healthier.

Combination of diet and exercise.

Kids are thrown outside to play at minus 10, and they survive

You don't need carbs with every meal

People are far less aggressive. People are friendlier and in general more open to interaction, especially if you have kids

Here it's at least ten years behind the UK with regards to a lot of things - tech, different cultures, loads of people don't know what halal is for example

I'll be back with a few more

I absolutely love this thread.

Iceland, again a while ago, things have changed there.

No convenience or processed foods, everything cooked from scratch. Outside of the capital only meals served were fish soup, meat soup, fish with veg, meat with veg and sometimes beef with veg. The fish was always plain white fish. Occasionally the one pizza chain and a service place that sold cheap burgers, chips and hot dogs where teenagers hung out.
Teenagers made extra money by cleaning windscreens in service stations.
Service stations are places where you buy petrol, have a small supermarket and a cafe selling burgers, etc where teenagers hang out. Outside few big cities is main place to buy stuff.
Few shops, people do mail order to buy stuff.
Very healthy life style with outdoor sports and soaking every evening in thermal baths.
Very high levels of sex equality, but not welcoming of foreigners living there.
Very very safe. Safe to leave cars and houses unlocked and valuables in cars.
Everyone knows everyone, or at least someone in your family.
High level of alcoholism from illegal home brew, but not the violence associated with being drunk.

Brit in the States

People popping round. And they just let themselves in! I've had to give up me habit of walking around naked as way too many people have seen me with no clothes on.

Bartering made me at first. I like it now though. We get various things for our eggs and maple syrup we make. Honey, bread, lobsters. My sil even paid her entire midwife bill with moose meat and venison.

How day drinking is frowned upon by most people. We've found our people that we can go out with a have a pint or Bloody Mary and not get side-eyed and muttered about drinking problems.

Also yes to be being so nice and genuinely (for the most part) interested. Coming from London it took me a while not to be so suspicious.

And also how community seems to be much tighter here so even in a big local town I'll know over half of the people there. Don't get me wrong it's lovely but sometimes you just want to grab some shopping looking like shit and half the people you know and the other half hear a British accent and want to grill you about everything and ask if you know 'Sarah' as she's from London too.