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

993 replies

AjasLipstick · 18/03/2018 06:53

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.

OP posts:
mathanxiety · 25/03/2018 07:26

On the same lines, another thing that I noticed in the US was front gardens with no walls, hedges or fences around them.

Nakedavenger74 · 25/03/2018 07:43

@mathanxiety that doesn't really hold does it? Think of a British queue. That stands for the same Hmm

ThisIsTheFirstStep · 25/03/2018 07:51

"co-operative, rational, respectful of unspoken rules, and mutually trusting"

If I had to think of a country which was represented by those traits, the US would really not come to mind.

mathanxiety · 25/03/2018 08:05

That is the expectation, the ideal, not necessarily the lived reality.
But actually it is how life is lived in some places. America is a big country and there are many cultural regions.

A British queue is similar, but the linear nature of the British queue assumes a level of mistrust underlying the process - how it will work is spelled out by the fact that a line forms. American crowds waiting will generally observe an honours system, as pointed out by a poster upthread.

With the 4 way stop you have traffic coming from all four points. It can't help being linear because the streets are linear, but the principle of coming to a halt and yielding can only work when people are ok with the basic principles of defensive driving and do not need the further regulation of traffic lights or the highly regulated roundabout.

user1487175389 · 25/03/2018 08:12

'Alright?' Is a London thing. When I moved out of London to somewhere more parochial, I found people didn't get how to do it properly. Instead of 'Alright?' 'Alright?' Here people give you a terse 'yes, thanks, you?'. Basically I have to learn to stop saying 'Alright?' Because it seems to put people on edge and that puts me on edge.

TheLastNigel · 25/03/2018 09:02

Canada-having to go to a separate shop to buy booze-no wine aisle in the supermarket. Milk coming in plastic bags that you then have to decant into a jug-and the weird percentages of fat in milk-loads of different ones and took me ages to work out what equates to semi skimmed.The insane price of cheese due to dairy tax in Ontario.A fondue was out of the question!
A nice one was how all coffee shops, big chains and independents stayed open til really late so you could go out and take the kids well into the evening-and Baskin Robbins all over the place so an after dinner stroll for ice cream was common.

tabulahrasa · 25/03/2018 09:20

“Another one...having to turn on the hot water. In the US you just have hot water on tap, there is no button to push!“

The only time I’ve ever had to push a button for hot water is a boost button to heat the water up when it’s running as only on at certain times and you want water outwith those times... but you set the times yourself - so if I lived there it’s just set to on always and I’d never use that button.

ThisIsTheFirstStep · 25/03/2018 09:28

math I feel like you could look at any situation and start saying stuff like that but it doesn't actually follow.

Korea is a very low trust society (one of the lowest in the world) but it's full of intersections. They don't typically espouse trust as a founding principle of Korea either, so it has really nothing to do with ideals.

AjasLipstick · 25/03/2018 09:51

User "Alright" is definitely a North West thing too.

OP posts:
Natsku · 25/03/2018 09:53

4 way stops are fairly common here, roundabouts are a newish import and it amuses me when some have arrowed lights reminding people which way to go round it Grin though they're becoming more and more common since I moved here.

SimonBridges · 25/03/2018 10:05

I have lived in a host of different houses with a stack of different water heating systems and I’ve never had to press a button to turn on the hot water, Snowflake.

The closest I guess was where I had a hot water tank and that was on a timer to heat up. However if someone had used up all the hot water and you wanted some then you had to switch the hot water tank on.

willisurvive3under2 · 25/03/2018 11:28

@tabulahrasa That would be very expensive! We do that at the weekend as we have a much more flexible schedule and it's nice to have hot water 'on tap', so to speak!!

BitOutOfPractice · 25/03/2018 12:07

I'm from the Black Country and "alright" (or "right?" Is a thing there too, usually accompanied by a sharp upward nod. It's not a question, it's a greeting.

Natsku · 25/03/2018 12:26

I have to switch a switch to get hot water (well to turn the boiler on) as there's no timer. And there is a button to press if you want to switch it from circulating to heat the house to just staying in the tank if you just want hot water rather than heating. Putting in an electric water heater thing that heats the water as it's used though.

NotCitrus · 25/03/2018 14:36

I learned to ski (downhill) while living in Norway, which was terrifying as their mountains are the wrong shape for beginners. Watching people coming down the slope in bikinis or briefs or even naked was amazing - well if you don't fall over, you get very hot, so might as well get a good suntan. I recall one naked guy who obviously fancied himself, spraying people with snow as he came to a halt, and everyone in the cafe cheering when on the sixth time round he fell over.

Going cross-country skiing to get to the shops in winter was normal. In summer you'd see some people doing it with skis with wheels. Changing rooms in swimming pools, inclduing the naked saunas, were mixed, though sexes did tend to congregate at each end with families in the middle.

On the whole it's a law-abiding efficient society, except alcohol. With only one shop selling anything stronger than weak beer, for towns the size of say Brighton or Cambridge, smuggling alcohol was a national pastime. General costs were such that many people flew to the UK every few months to go shopping and would bring back as much booze as they could. Then at Customs you would declare two bottles of wine (minimum amount for paying duty), and if lucky, the guard would let you on through, or if not, confiscate a proportion of what you were bringing in, almost certainly never officially recorded.

Works parties and any official event would provide 'drunk buses' for getting everyone home after, which could be great if you lived early on the route, but could take 3 hours if you lived at the far end. Police would breathalyse everyone on a road on Sun and Mon mornings, and many people would be done for driving over the limit (usually still under the UK limit), and eventually have to serve 6 weeks in jail. Apparently people would take sunlamps in and claim they'd been on holiday, but everyone would know.

New Year's Eve was the event of the year, with huge meals, comedy and then fireworks which always looked especially good over the snow. I never understood that much of the comedy beyond "there was a Norwegian man (hero!), a Danish man (pisshead) and a Swedish man (stupid and sex-crazed) ...".

Krokan (chips of caramel) and cinnamon in everything was great. Re-using teabags in cafeterias and restaurants, not so. Decent food if somewhat limited fish-obsessed menu.

Wonderful country but so much rain (classic joke, tourist asks a boy in Bergen if it ever stops raining. 'I don't know, I'm only nine years old'). They deal with it well, nothing is stopped by rain, so it was odd returning to England and finding builders abandoning scaffolding or football matches being called off because of rain.

Very few flat areas where grass can grow, so playgrounds are tarmac or grit, including most football pitches. Not much diving in football matches! I'm told that the equivalent of planning permission is basically "You think you can build there? ha ha. Good luck."

shesalady · 25/03/2018 17:06

I still sit at four way stops until everyone else has gone. Drives dh nuts.

misssmilla1 · 25/03/2018 17:09

See math I'd disagree, based on the use (or lack of...) of the 4 way stops around where we live. People often sail through them (even the ones with a crosswalk attached) without stopping and often pullout when you were there first.

That to me sums up a lot of my experience living in the US - that people will put themselves first, and bugger the consequence.

What's an even bigger head fcuk for me, is a 2 way stop with 3 approach roads we have near school. I still cannot work that one out!

shesalady · 25/03/2018 17:12

"People put themselves first"?

What a ridiculous blanket statement.

Where I live at least, most people are incredibly kind, giving and will go out of their way to help strangers let alone people they know.

Way way way more so than I've ever found in Britain.

SenecaFalls · 25/03/2018 17:16

I think the courtesy around four way stops must depend on what region of the country you're in. I'm in the southern US; you can grow old waiting for someone to make the first move while the other people at the stop are waving at people to go first. Similar problems when we got our first roundabout. The local powers-that-be finally decided to have "roundabout school" to teach people how to use it because everyone was holding back for others to enter the roundabout first.

shesalady · 25/03/2018 17:35

Roundabout school? 😂😂😂

Lweji · 25/03/2018 18:40

We need roundabout school here in Portugal.
Ever since new regulations came out for double lane roundabouts, drivers seem very confused.
Unless there's a police patrol watching it. In which case, every single driver seems very clear about what the rule is.

misssmilla1 · 25/03/2018 18:50

shes as I said, its based on my experience - yours is obviously different, it doesn't make either one 100% right

seneca oh that's excellent!

SenecaFalls · 25/03/2018 18:54

One of the things that I like about the advent of roundabouts in the US is that it means that we have imported a British word, when word importation usually seems to go the other way across the pond. In spite of some communities trying to call them "traffic circles", roundabout has become nearly universal, at least where I live.

shesalady · 25/03/2018 18:57

They're called 'traffic circles' or 'rotaries' here. When I say roundabout people think merry-go-round. Although they don't know what that means either as they say 'carousel'.

shesalady · 25/03/2018 18:58

Although I think there's only one roundabout in our state so it doesn't crop up so often. People actually shop at different towns just so they can avoid it. Grin