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.

Scot in Stuttgart. These must be the coldest, most standoffish, people on the face of the earth. I've even been told my Germans from other areas they find the locals hard going. The first time we lived here we had the same neighbours for 8/9 years. We never stepped foot in their house. They would occasionally invite my husband over for a beer but me and the kids were never invited. It would be really strange to sit in the garden with my boys while the neighbours entertained my husband in their garden.
Recycling in Germany. Absolutely brilliant but I don't understand why we get pounds of junk mail every week.

Naples. The filth everywhere. The racism, my landlord was convinced every black woman was a prostitute. The pushing in! We were trying to get off a train one day with our young baby in a pram. A group of young men trying to get on, pushed an elderly nun out of the way and stepped over our pram to get on before we got off. The area across from our house where cars would pull up and cover the windscreens with newspaper.

USA. Being unable to get a damn sandwich without a bloody pickle leaking juice into it. And the disgusting amount of cold meat put on a sandwich, I had to scrape most of it off.
Cockroaches. Every house we lived in we battled the damned things. And the size of them in the south?!?!
Ketchup on everything. I watched a man pour ketchup over blueberry pancakes...
Having an OAP carry your shopping to the car in Florida, made me cringe.
Being invited to someone's house for a drink, and getting "a" drink.

So even the head of the queue is too polite to leave in case they're jumping in front of someone pregnant/old/with small children/smaller/poorer/more worthy/half bloody dead...

Here in Portugal it has been put into law that pregnant/older/disabled have priority. Everywhere except A&E.

Oh another, turning left. It might be a regional thing but here if anyone wants to turn left they indicate and then move over to the right and wait until all the cars behind have passed before they turn.

What?

Same here but they go a bit OTT in the bank, supermarket is a bit more normal, unless of course you have more than the person behind and then the whole town and his brother can go in front of you.

Lweji I know, even my Brazilian husband thinks that's batshit. They also stop on rounderabouts and let people on. It's madness here. No one in our town could drive in Rio or São Paulo because they would be eaten alive.

France,

To me such a polite society and v friendly and helpful once you try speak the lingo and remember "bonjour" et "au revoir" to everyone always no matter where you are or what you are doing. I find it charming myself!

But OMG the supermarkets/shops. A conversation between a customer ahead with the cashier/assistant could last ten minutes minimum. But it's the norm and something we have to get used to, along with nowhere to eat after 2 pm, kitchen closed at 1pm and shops closed until 5 pm. Again, something that is normal for them and we have to endure and accept.

This is the third time I've lived in the US, and it's been interesting seeing what's changed and what's stayed the same. I've lived east coast, west coast, midwest, Appalachia...

When I first lived here I hated always being given Lipton teabag with some hot water - now I'm given a teapot and pointed towards a wide range of teas including Earl Gray, English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast and many others.

You couldn't get good beer here, or any alcoholic cider. Now you can't move for breweries selling amazing beer, and cider is easy to get.

Outdated banking. Now I pay all my cheques in via my iPhone, I have a contactless payment card, etc.

But many things have stayed the same and are wonderful...

Teachers focus on teaching. No wasting time on stupid rules regarding school uniforms, hair colour at school, etc. Schools have counselors, speech therapists, special ed specialists, social workers, nurses, etc.

Right turn on red.

Drive through ATMs - God I wish they'd had those in the UK when I had small children who were fast asleep and I desperately needed cash for something.

People are genuinely friendly and helpful. I found it so easy to make friends here. Whenever someone needs support the community rallies round.

People will stop their car on Main Street to let you cross despite the fact that there's a crosswalk 50 yards away that you're too lazy to walk to.

The 'can do' attitude.

The ethic of doing to work early and working very hard all day, then going home at 5pm and enjoying life to the full.

Things I don't like...

The drink driving blows my mind - people seem to have dozens of DUI convictions yet they still drive.

The xenophobia. Being told to fuck off back home.

In the UK to turn across traffic you wait in the middle, but in parts of Europe it's common to have a lane to pull off to the right where you wait to cross both lanes of traffic.

I was also astonished that my garden really does have snow on the ground non-stop from December to early April. I'd sort of assumed it would melt, then snow again and melt, then snow again and melt. But no. We don't even think about gardening till mid-April.

I moved to the UK from Russia as a kid and the first thing we noticed was that people don't really dress up for the cold!

I can remember my mum being absolutely outraged that girls were walking to school bare-legged in February, and blazers were an adequate replacement for coats in 5 degrees C. In Russia people wrap up in 10 layers and a hat up to about 20 degrees. She had me wearing a coat till about May 😜

Also how people wore flip-flops in winter but Uggs in summer, lol.

In the UK to turn across traffic you wait in the middle, but in parts of Europe it's common to have a lane to pull off to the right where you wait to cross both lanes of traffic.

But I think that is a bit different. It usually has traffic lights associated. It's usually found in high traffic, double or triple lane, roads.

Brit lived in a few different European countries:
Germany: getting used to the pfand system and recycling. Paying for bank accounts and addressing people as Herr Doktor but then using the informal to talk to them was a bit of a weird one.

Belgium: ingrained rascism and respect of all authority. Seeing people commute 2+ hours just to go back to their own village where they grew up

Netherlands: “Dutch lunch” and just how much everyone eats sprinkles here. The gemeente employs people to go around and pick up acorns in the autumn but they won’t employ someone to pick up rubbish. The casual acceptance of weed and smoking. Underage drinking seen as a norm and there’s lots of kids drinking with their parents. The use of grandparents as sole childcare and grandparents raising kids. The biggest culture shock to me was their “natural health” and limited interventions and checks during pregnancy and birth. There’s no gas and air and you’re encouraged to give birth at home. You’re only allowed into a hospital if there’s a reason for it

Kiwi in the UK
Have been here almost 20 years now but things that seemed strange at first were primary school kids in uniform, joined up houses ( terraces and semi-detached), parking on the 'wrong' side of the road, how polite people were letting you in while driving, pebble dashing and stripey lawns.

Couldn’t see past the title. Total tangent I know but I hate the word expat. You are an immigrant.

Being invited to a shared meal at my dd’s preschool and every single mum bringing a shepherd’s pie!!

When we lived in Berlin I was surprised I wasn’t allowed to mow my lawn on a Sunday, a bank holiday or between the hours of noon and 2pm and all my German neighbours thought this was entirely reasonable and couldn’t understand my consternation. Also the fact that saunas and spas were invariably mixed and any form of cover-up (swimsuit, towel etc) was banned. On the other hand they would be absolutely outraged if you didn’t wear flip flops.

I don’t consider myself an expat or an immigrant.

To me being an expat is a temporary state of affairs, where someone from a rich (usually anglophone) country lives somewhere else for a while, usually socialising a lot with other “expats”. Even if they never go home, they never fully integrate.

An immigrant is (usually) someone from a poorer country who has moved somewhere else for a better life. It’s a permanent move. (But some integrate well whereas others remain in their communities for generations, and their children usually have a bit of an identity struggle.)

I don’t fit either of those stereotypes. I am here for the foreseeable future, married to a French person, socialise almost exclusively with French people, plan to apply for French citizenship etc, but we might move to the UK one day.

I think immigrants think they are moving somewhere better than where they are from, expats think that where they are from is better than where they are temporarily living.

I am in neither camp.

Just returned from a month in NZ and absolutely loved it. If it’s supposed to be like the UK 30 years ago, I can’t say I noticed it - and I’ve lived here for 67 years.

But a few things:

• liberal use of the word “bugger”. I did notice this and I gather from posts above it’s normal and not offensive
• with one or two exceptions, the painfully slow service in restaurants. We ate out every day and toured both islands, so it wasn’t confined to one area. If you order for example a croissant and a coffee, don’t expect them to arrive at the same time. And if you’re eating with others, don’t expect your meals to arrive at the same time.
• bacon with everything. Please, do you have any dishes without bacon?

But we found kiwis to be very friendly and are planning to return. One day.

poop You are an expat if you aren't on a local contract. DH is an expat and I'm an immigrant here in the US. DH could be called back to HQ at any given time with very little notice. DH is Danish.

I considered myself an expat in Berlin because we were there for a limited period relating to DH’s job contract.

I feel bad about my remarks on NZ so in order to redress the balance I I'll say what baffles me about the UK when I'm back there.

• Mawkish obsession with WW1 & WW2
• Fetishisation of the NHS
• Smoothly polite but entirely unhelpful shop assistants
• Long helplines with "computer says no" at the the other end.
• Not telling off children who are playing up in public
• Banks staffed by red tape and Daleks
• People who blandly smile instead of saying they're about to explode with frustration at said helplines / shop assistants / children / banks.
• Regarding Scotland as somehow special and uniquely different.

Visiting the UK after years in NZ is like entering a huge, humming high-tech machine where everything moves around with extreme efficiency; however, you have to do what the machine wants and if you don't, it's just impossible.

@ZuLuwarrior
Great story, just wondered which one of the 54 countries in Africa did you mean?

In Nigeria we say "how now?"

Boxthefox - yes to all of that. Especially the lunch between 12 and 2 (l’heure de dejeuner - it should of course be deux heures) Even during a recent trip to IKEA and arriving at 3.15pm we found all meatballs and lunch dishes had been cleared though there was an extensive range of gouter items - cakes, pastries etc. My mum used to laugh when invited to the school fete at the kids’ French school in London that there would be a MASSIVE queue for food at 1pm and then no one until 4pm when the gouter queue built up. None of that all day grazing you see at English school fetes.

I'm an immigrant. I don't think it has anything to do with whether you've moved to a richer country or for a better life.

I'm quite intrigued to know what DH is though. He's American by descent but never lived in the US as a child. He first moved to the US age 18. He's bounced between the UK and US since then. He has an English accent, and many passports.