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.

Love I did say it was for obvious reasons! But yes France doesn't have the middle of nowhere excuse at all!

It's true. No non-French wine ever spotted in a French supermarket. I sort of sneakily admire the French complete confidence in the vast superiority of their food and wine (even though it's often misplaced. I've had some shocking food in France and the choice in most Brasseries is very limited) as it's the complete opposite to the British quivering apology stance. It is annoying though when you want a bottle of fizz (prosecco? Cava?) That doesn't cost a king's ransom.

Ha nakedavenger you have just described my laundry, down to the brand. So predictable.

I have remembered something I found weird about the UK - when filling in a form that asked your ethnicity a box to tick for "black" or "white". I was "white" is not an ethnicity!

That said in NZ I would tick "NZ European" which is a pretty broad category but at least isn't just about skin colour.

Ooh, actually, my husband does buy Prosecco in Monoprix. So maybe I am wrong. But I will reserve judgement until I can look at the bottle and check that it is not actually Frosecco!!

@GinUser Not using your knife to cut potatoes (there was a reason for this as the starch in the potatoes used to tarnish knives in the past).

Same rule, different reason, I was taught that the 'not using knife to cut potatoes' or indeed anything soft was that the implication of using a knife on food intended to be soft when eaten, was that the cook was not believed to be sufficiently competent to make the potatoes soft enough to eat without a knife or that the quality of the food was so very low, that a knife would be needed.

I've had a quick google and found only your explanation, so perhaps it was only my mother's friend. Or, just as likely, unexpectedly asked for an explanation, the friend produced the first explanation that came to her.

Frosecco
He's done well to track that down. Certainly none in the supermarket near our place. And trust me, I've looked!

I have lived and worked in Italy for a number of years. I was surprised that Italians love dogs. There are well-behaved, beautifully dressed dogs everywhere and their owners totally dote on them. I was't surprised because I 'd assumed some kind of pathological hatred of dogs but Italians loving their dogs isn't a stereotype I'd heard of before I moved here.

What I struggle to handle is the directness of Italians. If you've put on weight over Christmas, they will tell you; if you're looking tired, they will tell you; if your lunch looks disgusting, they will tell you. It's all done in a very caring way ("you look like shit, is everything okay, what can I do to help") but I just can't get used to it especially when you think you look cracking and someone comments you look like a heap of shit

I've remembered a couple more of mine....
The price of alcohol in the UK. How expensive it is compared to home. Especially Jagermeister which people here take as a drink, rather than the medicine that it is supposed to be.
Being referred by the G.P to a hospital to see a specialist and having to wait weeks and months to see that specialist.
Having to pay for a check up at the dentist.

On a lighter note, when my Husband mentioned that he needed to buy my parents a Christmas gift. My young nephew who was around six years old at the time began to cry and asked my Husband why he was going to poison his grandparents.
Gift is poison in German. 😂

expat don't know if it's been mentioned, but the women (always women) mopping the PAVEMENTS at 8 am every bloody day.

In fact, a general obsession with mopping.

Totally agree about the noise, it's unbearable. I could kill my neighbours.

This is Spain btw!

Gift in Danish means both married and poison!

Don't know whether antipodean toploaders are better but the ones in the US used to be rubbish for getting your clothes clean.

I remember this from trying to get to sleep in spain, everytime you have just dropped off, a moto in the distance ,nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn will wake u up agai .

I think some of these things apply to many countries. I've read things about Spain, Italy, France and the Middle East that apply to Cyprus too.

Going back to good old cheese, I wouldn't necessarily expect someone, for example, in France to eat British cheese. But I would expect someone from France or elsewhere who is living in Britain to educate themselves better about the food, especially our wonderful cheese but there are many other great products. It's such a shame that Cheddar hasn't been subject to Doc (or whatever it's called), the muck on sale from all over the world is an abomination. They did it not long ago with Cornish pasties so it can be done retrospectively.

Do NZ fridges still have butter conditioners?

No - I've never owned one that did.

Being referred by the G.P to a hospital to see a specialist and having to wait weeks and months to see that specialist.

This took some getting used to. I don't need a specialist often, but accessing a gynecologist for a check up would be brilliant.

Yes Davros.

Another colleague of mine spent a year in London and yet still told me (in all seriousness) that I have no right to defend British food because our “plat national” is fish and chips.

I was like, “According to whom? I eat fish and chips maybe once a year!” and he says, “Oh, everybody knows that!”

Then when I pushed him to say what France’s “plat national” is, after prevaricating a bit and saying they don’t really have one because they eat lots of different things (so do we, duh...), he said maybe coq au vin or boeuf bourgignon. I wasn’t having that and said he couldn’t tell us our “plat national” is fast food and make out that theirs is something proper. You’re comparing chalk and cheese. I could just as easily (and probably far more legitimately) say that the French “plat national” is a croque monsieur or even a Big Mac!

I don’t know what he ate in London for a year but I’d say his views reflect far more poorly on him than they do on London.

Anyway, I’m now on a one woman mission to show the French that they are wrong about British food!

Expat in Belgium:

• kids start school here sooo early, at 2.5. Now I´m used to it I love it and think it is really useful for working mums.
• giving birth here used to be like a holiday: with my first I had to share a room with someone who had stocked our joint fridge (intended for cold packs etc). with snacks and champagne for all the visitors that came by. I felt very alone as she´d have huge crowds coming by every day while I spent my visiting hours with husband only.
• living in Brussels is fine but there are always so many road works going on. The city is quite dirty (but on a recent trip to Paris I saw that it could be much worse).
• The French speaking kids I know tend to be overly polite. If a colleague brings her son in, he will on his own initiative make a round to give all the colleagues a peck on the cheek. Also very well dressed kids.
• Difficult to really get to know Belgians outside the office. After 15 years, most of our friends are still other expats, even though we try (hosted the end-of-year party a couple of times at our place etc.). The Belgians we know tend to spend their weekends with their own extensive family, not with friends.

will try to think of more!

LoveInTokyo I hear that attitude all the time from French and Dutch people. But that's usually from people who've not spent much time in the UK. If that bloke has lived in London and still thinks that, he should be taken out and shot.

It's so much harder to find something a bit "different" in France isn't it? It's all brasserie food or classic cuisine, I find. Which is often great but sometimes I'd like something different.

Having said that, I guess a lot of standard pub menus are the same in the UK: curry, fish and chips, pie, sausages and mash, lasagne, scampi etc

@Cigna I have no idea what they are doing with their Belgian roadworks though! The roads in Belgium are atrocious! Driving from Calais to The Hague the French roads are all smooth, then as soon as you cross the border into Belgium its all bump, bang, potholes, noisy surfaces, then cross into NL and it's smooth again. It's so funny!

Personally I found Brussels to be one of my least favourite places. Sorry!

BitOutOfPractice

Yes it’s a very common attitude. Not everyone though, and thankfully not my husband or inlaws or our close friends.

The range of different cuisines in restaurants is definitely more limited in Paris than in London, although I will say that Paris does reasonably priced sushi much, much better than London.

We'veused toploaders in Aus and NZ and they've always been crap at getting our clothes clean as well as mangling a few items. We brought our front loader over from the UK and it washes so much better as well as being more gentle with clothes.

It’s a bit late to mention this but WHY WOULD YOU POST IN THIS THREAD WITHOUT SAYING WHAT COUNTRY YOU’RE IN??!!

There are hundreds of posts on this thread where people launch in with “All the cheese here is rubbish, not like at home” without saying where a) here or b) home is.

Most people have put that on their first post and then not subsequent ones. Just read back

Love this thread

Irish person here lived in England for 10 years and married to an English man. Things I found unusual about my own culture after moving back to Ireland was how much we curse! Lived in London for 10 years and then moved back and was shocked how much we can't seem to complete a sentence without adding in the odd swear word (I am back 12 years now so happily cursing as much as the next man again ). Also how late the Irish are compared to UK. You say we'll meet at 2pm guarantee it will be well after that before people start arriving in England you say 2pm and people will turn up at 2pm.

Things I found unusual in England. Death. It seemed so taboo my husband hadn't been to a funeral until his nan died when he was 33. No one goes to visit the body or is encouraged to. We seem to deal with death so much better and way healthier.
I also found some of the English people I came across mainly through my work unable to make small talk I could blabber on for ages about nothing and they just looked at me in horror and said very little back.
Also you tend to go out of an evening very early. Pubs are packed from 7pm. Here they don't start getting busy until after 10pm but that may be because drink is so expensive in Ireland that people have a few at home first. I also found the chain bars hard to take. You could be having a drink in Leeds or Leicester and be in the exact same place same décor everything

As for the tea mention earlier in the thread I have not found that In England my mil is from the South west of England and I have to lose weight before visiting because of how much she feeds us!