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Someone In This Online Group Asked “What Was Something That Shocked You When You Visited A Foreign Country?” And 35 People Delivered
Being in a place where things are done differently than you are used to can cause confusion, anxiety and a feeling of uncertainty, even if the environment you are in is actually better than the one you feel more comfortable in. All those feelings can be described as a culture shock as a person is cut off from the cultural patterns that are familiar and has to adapt to something new.
Most often the term is used when talking about moving to another country or traveling. There are ways to soften the culture shock and one of them is asking people to share their own experiences on Reddit so you can prepare for it. We’re not sure what was the motivation of Kampfhamster248 to ask “What was something that shocked you when you visited a foreign country?” but it sure does help to know what people in the thread had to say before going somewhere for the first time.
Which one of these surprised you the most? Maybe you are from the aforementioned countries and can deny or confirm these claims? What would you personally answer if asked the question? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
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When I went to Japan I went to a bathhouse and my leg started spasming violently when I got in a tub. I thought I was having a stroke, but it turns out they have pools with electrical currents to promote longevity. That was literally my most shocking experience overseas
Falling snow. I'm Australian so while we have snow the chances of experiencing falling snow when you're on holidays is slim.
The first time I experienced falling snow was when I was in Paris at the age of 20. I LOST MY S**T. Squealing and had a ball. Everyone probably thought I was crazy but for me it was magical and amazing.
How wounderfull, that you got to experience a new country and your first snowfall at the same time.
How f**king clean Japan is. You can walk around Tokyo for a day and struggle to find as much as a gum wrapper on the ground. It is truly incredible.
When I moved to the Netherlands a few years ago from the USA I deliberately wrote down the things that struck me as strange a few weeks into it because I knew I wouldn't remember later, and here are a few.
Bicycles are everywhere and are a far more common mode of transport than cars... yet no one wears helmets.
A Dutch person telling you "I speak a little English" is like Stephen Hawking saying "I know a little physics." I really had no idea it could be so easy to move to another country where you don't speak the language, and that's because the Dutch are so amazing at English (unlike other countries, for example, TV here isn't dubbed but instead in original language and just subtitled).
Big Bird is blue in Holland! I mean, they claim he's Pino, Big Bird's cousin, but I'm not fooled. You know he really just moved here to explore an alternative lifestyle.
How price tags in America do not include Taxes!
Swedish babies are hardcore. And people are awesomely chill and friendly. In mid-January, it was knee-deep snow everywhere, yet in Stockholm is was pretty common to see parents enjoying a drink at a cafe, with a queue of prams outside in the snow.
The babies are wrapped up heavily yes, but they are fully comfortable leaving them outside like that. No fears over child-thievery, or worries about the cold. These kids are brought up to be metal right from the word go. It's awesome.
I imagine if you tried that in the UK (or especially US) there'd be hysteria and child services would relieve you of your parenting.
Used to be like that when I was a kid growing up in 70s England and Ireland.
How many homeless people there are in the USA. I've been to 30+ countries and I've seen more homeless in the US than anywhere else. I'd say even more than homeless dogs in Mexico. It's was extremely shocking.
It might seem that way, based on where you visited, but actually the US doesn't have the highest homeless rate, from what I could find. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homeless_population One link I found. The US is down the list a bit. Granted, it’s hard to compare since countries may have different ways of defining and counting the homeless, but this chart has the US with a lower rate than the UK, Australia, France, Sweden, Mexico, Israel, Germany and Austria for example.
Living in Germany I have recently talked to an exchange student from Bangladesh. He was seriously shocked that people would stop at red traffic lights although there were no other cars/pedestrians around. Gave me a good laugh.
How truly polite the Japanese are. And how unbelievably clean the cities of Japan are.
How corrupt the police force is in Mexico.
This is silly, but in 2003 I visited Germany and was absolutely blown away that the escalators didn't start moving until you approached them (like automatic sliding doors). In America they're always just going. I thought it was genius.
How fat the majority of the people were in the midwest United States
Trains in India. Furious fighting, shoving, scratching, and clawing to get on, then for the rest of the eight hour journey scrupulous "I'm so sorry I brushed your foot with mine" politeness.
I have never taken a train but I see people hanging out of the train I think because of the lack of space. There are at least 4 or 5 people hanging out the doors and everything looks so cramped
How small all of the fruit was in England. One apple in the US is like two UK apples. I went through a lot of apples.
I think that's because the US sells a lot of genetically modified fruit...
There's a distinct difference between the apples that are sold loose, by the pound, and the apples that are bagged. You'll find the loose apples are the bigger ones, and more expensive. The bagged ones are generally much smaller, even if they are the same variety. Source: living in Michigan, one of the biggest apple producing states in the US.
Load More Replies...Quality over Quantity ! tomatoes are big in the US and absolutely flavorless !
Not if they are locally grown or you grow them yourself. We have tomatoes year round in our stores, they are not all grown here. Those huge tasteless numbers are off season and designed to be shipped, or even picked before ripe.
Load More Replies...Not just in England, but anywhere where you aren't allowed to stuff produce with hormones.
The only genetically modified fruits in the US are one variety of apple, the Artic Apple, and one variety of papaya, mostly grown in Hawai'i (smaller yellow green skinned one). The rest of the fruit is selectively bred to be larger, and then fruit is often culled off the plant in the early stages to allow the fruit that remains to grow larger.
🤨 then how is it corporate farms are allowed to sue independent farmers when they are within a pollination zone for a percentage of their crop? This tactic is used to take over land. Corn is the crop that my buddy lost his farm to Monsanto (Bayer) over. They have a patent on their corn (GMO) and the fact that has crops could've been pollinated by their corn they had every right to claim his harvest as theirs. Battled to the last of this savings and still lost.
Load More Replies...Its how they have been grown for centuries. The soil and weather all contribute to our small delish apples
I never noticed. What I did love was the open produce kiosk with unfrozen fruit. The ones in our supermarkets in Canada, the peaches and nectarines are often as hard as baseballs.
Because they are not ripped, not because they were frozen lol.
Load More Replies...Yes hello, apple farmer here. Apple size is determined by variety and growing season. I have varieties that are ENORMOUS, and varieties that are quite small. One tree may produce apples of many sizes. Your garden tree needs thinning if you want big apples. And all modern food is genetically modified if you think about it. I believe the original apples from the Levant were/are bit much bigger than cherries.
I worked with a woman whose family owned a peach grove in Georgia. She came into work one day with giant juicy wonderful peaches. They were the best peaches I'd ever had. The discussion evolved into why they didn't sell those peaches. First it would be impossible to ship them and have them arrive unbruised. Why not locally? They were so juicy they just didn't last, put them on a shelf and they start to collapse. They had no marketability. They ended up being a bonus for family and friends only.
This is such an odd post. We have apples of all sizes in the US. quite a few are grown here but many are not. Now this is just a guess but don't we have more sunny days here than in England? Fruit and veggies grow bigger and better in sunlight.
How terse clerks & other service people were in England. Strictly businesslike they were, no polite chit-chat, no how are you doing, no thanks & come again. That was in the 1990s, I wonder if it has changed since then.
smaller apples are better (IMHO) in that they fit better into my brief case.
Supermarkets probably don’t take the small ones. They probably go for juice or are wasted.
The American food industry has determined that Americans will always buy the largest of anything, regardless of its taste or nutritional value. Given that the actual food typically accounts for only 20-30% of what people pay for it, this is why we have bagels big enough to wear for hats, and millions of people who could pass for sea lions in an exhibit at the zoo.
We have all kinds of apples in my country (Europe), small, big, yellow, red and green, softer, bitter, sour, sweet, absolutely all kinds of apples in almost all stores. This is not about USA/UK thing but about different aspects of the quality of life.
The UK doesn't have the same amount of sunshine so maybe the growing period is shorter
The tap water in Vienna. Holy s**t it was delicious.
Try Sweden. You can’t even buy bottled water in Stockholm. I tried. They politely told me to just get water from a public fountain. Cleanest water ever. And I know there’s a lot of bottled water in the first district in Vienna.
French people (or Parisians, at least) are INTENSE about escalators. Your options are to either stand to one side (the right side, I think?) or sprint up the other side like an angry baboon is chasing you. If any part of you sticks out into the passing lane - you'll hear all about it.
When I went to New York I couldn't get over how familiar everything looked on my first day there. I must have seen way more films and TV shows filmed in Manhattan than I realized, but pretty much everywhere looked exactly as I expected it to.
Originally from Canada, spent a few weeks in China. I was shocked when I regularly saw kids squat down on the sidewalk and take a dump.
I lived in Japan for a year. The satellite radio at my school had a channel called "Rokki" that played the Rocky theme song on a loop 24:7.
I don't carry coins with me usually, which makes it tough to pee in a lot of Europe.
Yeah, in my family we call them pee coins and we don't use them to pay for things because we know we'll need them for a real emergency. We have a small kid and spend a lot of time out of the house. :D
How much Indian food there was in London.
I mean, Indians have been emigrating to the UK for years now. I think it is partially because they used to rule over our country for nearly 200 years
The traffic in Rome.
I live in Finland and it's unusual if my trip to university is delayed by a single second by other people, so people wasting over one hour stuck in traffic every day would be the most frustrating thing I can imagine.
Slovakia -> Austria. how clean can a country be. lack of dirt, roads and sidewalks in good condition, flowers everywhere. no old torn posters, no billboards on every lamp post.
I like to think that their state or police make them clean up against their own will but most probably they just like it that way and we got used to our dirt during communism.
Researchers at Yale University and Columbia University collaborated with the World Economic Forum to measure the cleanliness and environmental friendliness of over 180 countries around the world. Cleanest Countries in the World 2021 : 1. Denmark 2. Luxembourg 3. Switzerland 4. United Kingdom 5. France 6. Austria 7. Finland 8. Sweden 9. Norway 10. Germany
When I visited Hollywood, I couldn't believe how disgustingly dirty it was, and how unsafe I felt! It may just have been that I was unlucky enough to experience a couple of crazy incidents in my first two nights, but it definitely wasn't all the glitz and
ALSO: people seem to be assuming that Hollywood Boulevard was the only place I saw in the whole of LA, and that I've condemned the city because of this one area. This isn't true. I was just stating that it was shocking to me that it was so different to my expectations, but I had an awesome time in LA, ventured around to multiple different area, and even had a great night out in Hollywood at an insane nightclub. Hell, even though it was shocking at first, I even like that I now have some crazy stories to tell from my time there!
It’s the most plastic, fake place I have ever been. Strange because just north in Ventura County it’s not quite the same.
Shops are closed on Sunday in France except Subway and McDonalds
There are a lot of European countries where stores are closed on sunday.
When I went to America McDonalds had refillable Dr Pepper. I was in heaven.
The parking in Portugal is shocking the whole country seems to park their cars like they have stolen them.
Spotted a Ferris Wheel & Resort surrounding a reservoir in Afghanistan. Wasn't prepared for that at all.
Also, the social aggressiveness of Females in Iceland! They will court a male in a heartbeat.
In South Korea there is no seperate shower in the bathroom. The showerhead sprays directly on the floor and there is a drain in the corner of the room.
How expensive the alcohol is in Australia. I had to sit down after I saw the 40 dollar crate of beer.
When I was very young I was suprised about how many buildings were there in Hong Kong. It was also suprising about how we had to use the subway system a lot.
Worlds most vertical city. I say that because HK island has more vertical buildings than Kowloon, New Territories…
Load More Replies...US: You can turn right in red light, but if you turn left in green light, you may easily get a car crash if not careful...
Some places it's illegal to turn right on red. And yes, turning left on green, there are no turns at some lights, we have jug handles (nj). My brother was in a serious motorcycle accident because someone turned left at a light right in front of him, my brother had the right of way. Almost cost him his life.
Load More Replies...I'm glad everywhere has toilets now. I was really shocked by Spanish toilets in the 1990s.
I live in New England. Driving down I-95 to Florida is like visiting a foreign country.
By far my biggest shock was the lack of universal healthcare in other countries (I'm british) & also lack of basic social support. Seeing disabled people begging in the street was shocking & I couldn't understand why all the people who saw it didn't feel deeply ashamed. (Plus when I saw a McDonald's with an armed guard in Manilla)
I live in India, you should not give money to disabled people, few of them are acting, many will buy alcohol few belong to a group that kidnaps kids and make them beg for profits and make them disabled. It's hideous.
Load More Replies...India: how locals didn't know their neighborhoods. We needed to get to a street nearby and no one we asked knew what we were talking about. It turned out it was three streets over.
It's less that they don't know the names, and more that they're never told. Streets in India don't have signs with their names on them. My mom, who'd lived in Pune's Kothrud district for 3 decades, didn't know most of the street names until she heard them on Google Maps. Instead of asking for street locations, it's better to just go with landmarks.
Load More Replies...I feel like this should be one of those lists Pandas could add their own post to. One shock when I was visiting Manchester, UK, was how much litter was everywhere, including in the parks. Not that there's no litter in Canada. It was the amount that shocked me. I watch a lot of British media and did some research before I went, so some things I was prepared for.
I've heard this from other people recently; that the litter situation in the UK is surprisingly bad. Anybody know why that is?
Load More Replies...Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I d it outit.. HERE ?? 𝐰𝐰𝐰.𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭.𝐜𝐨𝐦
Getting a haircut in England. 😳 Total eye opener. Tip the washer grrrrrl, and never EVER say “It’s okay, I will just towel dry it” eep. Then I mistakenly opened my banana to eat while standing on the sidewalk watching an antinuclear demonstration. One would have thought I slapped the Queen. Truth is I had horrible jet lag, having flown in from Hawaii and honestly if the Queen had shown up and given me the side eye, I probably wouldn’t have noticed
When I was very young I was suprised about how many buildings were there in Hong Kong. It was also suprising about how we had to use the subway system a lot.
Worlds most vertical city. I say that because HK island has more vertical buildings than Kowloon, New Territories…
Load More Replies...US: You can turn right in red light, but if you turn left in green light, you may easily get a car crash if not careful...
Some places it's illegal to turn right on red. And yes, turning left on green, there are no turns at some lights, we have jug handles (nj). My brother was in a serious motorcycle accident because someone turned left at a light right in front of him, my brother had the right of way. Almost cost him his life.
Load More Replies...I'm glad everywhere has toilets now. I was really shocked by Spanish toilets in the 1990s.
I live in New England. Driving down I-95 to Florida is like visiting a foreign country.
By far my biggest shock was the lack of universal healthcare in other countries (I'm british) & also lack of basic social support. Seeing disabled people begging in the street was shocking & I couldn't understand why all the people who saw it didn't feel deeply ashamed. (Plus when I saw a McDonald's with an armed guard in Manilla)
I live in India, you should not give money to disabled people, few of them are acting, many will buy alcohol few belong to a group that kidnaps kids and make them beg for profits and make them disabled. It's hideous.
Load More Replies...India: how locals didn't know their neighborhoods. We needed to get to a street nearby and no one we asked knew what we were talking about. It turned out it was three streets over.
It's less that they don't know the names, and more that they're never told. Streets in India don't have signs with their names on them. My mom, who'd lived in Pune's Kothrud district for 3 decades, didn't know most of the street names until she heard them on Google Maps. Instead of asking for street locations, it's better to just go with landmarks.
Load More Replies...I feel like this should be one of those lists Pandas could add their own post to. One shock when I was visiting Manchester, UK, was how much litter was everywhere, including in the parks. Not that there's no litter in Canada. It was the amount that shocked me. I watch a lot of British media and did some research before I went, so some things I was prepared for.
I've heard this from other people recently; that the litter situation in the UK is surprisingly bad. Anybody know why that is?
Load More Replies...Google pay 97$ per hour my last pay check was $8500 working 1o hours a week online. My younger brother friend has been averaging 12k for months now and he works about 22 hours a week. I cant believe how easy it was once I d it outit.. HERE ?? 𝐰𝐰𝐰.𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐬𝐭.𝐜𝐨𝐦
Getting a haircut in England. 😳 Total eye opener. Tip the washer grrrrrl, and never EVER say “It’s okay, I will just towel dry it” eep. Then I mistakenly opened my banana to eat while standing on the sidewalk watching an antinuclear demonstration. One would have thought I slapped the Queen. Truth is I had horrible jet lag, having flown in from Hawaii and honestly if the Queen had shown up and given me the side eye, I probably wouldn’t have noticed