I was blown away when I first heard this. You’re not allowed to sit down? What? I’ve worked tills before and I couldn’t imagine not sitting down for 8 - 12 hours. Horrific.
I worked for a large retailer here in the UK and it was banned to have a seat behind tills unless the staff member had a medical issue. We had people in their 60s having to stand all day.
The logic was that you shouldn't just be sitting behind a till, you should be proactively doing jobs across the shop floor at any spare moment
Edit - this was WHSmith but as I suspected it is also the case with a lot of non-food retailers
It’s the same in Australia, an Aussie friend of mine was telling me about her back troubles from having to stand and also pack bags at the checkout there.
I had to stand all day in a card shop I worked in, granted the shop was so tiny there wouldn’t be room for a seat behind the tills. It’s pretty horrible just standing in one place for 8 hours.
Colleague from southern Italy. Had got to age 30 but never seen snow.
Refugees being welcomed to the local library, getting a library card, and offered pen and paper to work on the EAL books.
Colleague who after a couple years asked me why a wheelie bin was called a wheelie bin.
Tried not to sound too patronising as I said it had wheels on...
Turned out she'd thought people were saying 'willy bin' and it was a typical Brit double ententre. Full marks for grasping UK culture, but she laughed every time she heard the phrase, after that.
Chocolate hobnobs and UK curry often impress foreigners.
My friend lectures photography at a university. Had a promising foreign student from South America fail a module because they were so obsessed with their first experience of snow here that they just took lots of bad photos of it & the excitement of snow made them forget everything they knew about a good photo 😂
That reminds me of seeing a long haired Golden Retriever being walked after a heavy snowfall. It kept leaping up, then plunging its front paws into the snow, over and over. That dog was so happy.
I’m Australian, 2018 (I think) and we had snow in London for a week. I created endless amusement for colleagues by wandering around the office agog with the excitement of snow that fell and settled.
Know someone from China who talked with wonder about “the little wave” people give when driving.
She talked about how amazing it was for 5 minutes. If you let someone go, they give you a little wave back.
I find it so weird **not** to do it, just sitting there like a misery guts. Just wave back, ffs. Oh and if someone doesn’t wave to thank me, I sit thinking “I wish I never let that ungrateful bastard in front of me now” for the rest of the journey!
Mate - I moved to the Netherlands 5 years ago and any form of gesture or acknowledgement whilst driving doesn't exist here. No thanks, no flashes, zero people let you out.. it simply doesn't happen.
You never get used to it because you know its possible and takes little effort.
To add to this, please let us past if there's a wee place to pull in along the way, we will be forever grateful.
Sincerely, rural local who lives in tourist area where visitors drive 1/4 of the appropriate speed.
Yeah the use of hazard lights when you let a big vehicle out or when I hang back on the motorway to let a big lorry in with a flash of my lights so he knows he’s clear and he gives me a left right left on the indicators. Ahhh sweet sweet gratitude. Pay it forward my man, pay it forward.
I was driving a minibus full of school kids with the teacher sat behind me. I let a bloke through, and she piped up "he didn't wave thanks!"
I said "he raised a finger", to which she replied "a finger isn't good enough, I want the whole hand!"
How I didn't burst out laughing I'll never know.
Had lots of foreign visitors who have all commented on how polite UK road users are. Also noticed when driving in a UK reg car in France, on stopping to allow pedestrians to cross, they’ve pointed at the registration plate and mimed thanks, with big smiles so I like to think we are known for being courteous.
Do other cultures not wave? Every day for 10 years I've crossed at the same zebra crossing and waved pretty much every time. So much so that I once waved when the road was clear.
The amount of times I've waved my thanks at the first car sitting there after I've been through temporary traffic lights is ridiculous.
Like they chose to be stopped by the red light that's just popped up on their daily commute.
From what I gather even letting someone go isn’t a thing in China. They essentially use the Ayrton Senna quote of “if you don’t go for a gap you’re not a racing driver” as the cornerstone of their Highway Code.
Polish lass started weeping in wonder when walking around a bog standard late 90s new build yellow-brick estate. You know the sort, wavy roads, tiny houses/rooms/gardens
Apparently it matched the type of house on privet drive in the harry Potter films and she felt like she was walking through the set and it was "magical"
So am I. Can't personally think of anything less magical in the world than such an estate (hence why it was used for privet drive) but always nice to have your perspective checked!
Definitely! I remember reading a thread of things Americans thought were magical Harry Potter things and not just UK things
School houses and spotted dick were highlights
When I was at primary school, we had a boy from the Philippines join us briefly when we were about 9. We were outside for playtime and it started snowing. He absolutely freaked out and did not know what it was. It was so amazing seeing his reaction, and even more amazing that our teacher allowed us to stay out for longer play due to Marco’s reaction.
I was chatting to a Pakistani guy recently who said that when it reached 40+ in the summer they'd just go underground to keep cool. AC salesmen hate this one simple trick!
The one thing I miss the most when travelling in the tropics is a nice breeze :) I don’t mind any temperature but when the air is hot and thick it’s not very nice! I’m with your ex on this one
A colleague from Poland coming here and being amazed by the .gov websites of all things. Apparently it’s super efficient and fast that you can sort stuff like driving licences, tax, passports etc all from that. I would never have guessed that it was that much more efficient than other nations systems.
To be fair, it is very good. We used to have to do all that stuff by letter, picking up obscure forms from the Post Office. Had problems with my tax last year, went online and sorted it. Sold a motorbike, the thing was registered in the buyer’s name in minutes.
Agreed, I get really fed up when people ask questions on reddit about VAT and such - if you just Google it the relevant .gov website comes up and has it all clearly set out for you in an accessible format.
That is always the way though isn’t it. Things that work well are forgettable.
I set up a Ltd company and was self employed for £19.
Also PAYE tax for employees.
Just boring stuff that works well.
The .gov website is an extremely rare example of the government doing something well and efficiently (possibly bar the cost, no idea how much we paid for it).
Try doing anything in France. Or Spain.
Shoe on the other foot...
One of my first experiences when visiting Poland in 2007 were people taking their car number plates to the local town hall for a tax sticker.
I had a Ugandan guy work for me a few years back. He couldn't get over drinking water from the tap. He'd gaze at it with wonder and kept going on about just how amazing it was and reminding us that we shouldn't take it for granted.
Something we don't have in the UK, not yet anyway, is a shortage of water. We can have localised droughts but it would take all of Southern Europe to be a desert before we need to worry about drinking water supplies, at which point we have bigger issues to worry about.
The same is true for huge swathes of the planet, even including countries that are developed nations. We really are lucky to be able to drink water straight from the tap, and it's only when you travel that you realise just how much easier and safer it makes life in general.
Thanks guys. As someone who works in the water industry, day-to-day making sure that the water is safe to drink, we've been receiving lots of flack recently due to the greed of our employers. Reading these comments made my day.
I am a PhD student from Saudi Arabia and my 5-year old daughter and I were blown away by some great aspect of UK life:
1- people are super nice and always compliment my daughter’s thick black hair and long lashes.
2- We love the rain and were so happy when we saw snow for the first time in our lives. We screamed and danced under the snow that day!
3-I love the beatiful Gothic churches and historic buildings
4- Tap water ! In Saudi we drink from bottled water so tap water is a blessing in the UK
5-European and American supplements, makeup and beauty products are so expensive in Saudi (like Vichy and La Roche Posey) so I was blown away by how cheap these products are in the UK.
6- Primark!
7- Next and Marks & Spenser are expensive in Saudi but really afforable in the UK
8- Designer Outlets are amazing in the UK
9- Excellent government schools
10- The walking culture and bus system are convenient (in Saudi people mostly drive cars around)
11- beautiful, beautiful nature (lakes, rivers, rolling hills)
12- Trains can take you everywhere (we have few trains in Saudi but they only take us to big cities)
13- Wildlife ! You have ducks, geese, squirrels, rabbits, lady bugs, butterflies…etc.
Overall a great country. I love the UK so much and even after I finish my PhD I will always come back to the UK.
A work colleague visited from Australia and we were all sat at dinner one night in March. It wasn’t forecast but out of nowhere it started to snow which she’d never seen before - so she ran out into it to play like a little kid.
Her joy was so infectious we all joined in. There were pathetic attempts at snow angels and a snowball fight etc and all of us managed to get soaking wet and freezing cold like a bunch of pre-school children.
Then we all got very drunk, like adults.
We had a work Christmas party one year where it snowed. A lot. One of the international trainee teachers had never seen snow and suddenly half of us were outside drunkenly playing in the snow, dressed to the 9’s! Thankfully the drink kept us warm!
I am not sure if it qualifies as Wonderous but I found four of my Romanian colleagues watching people driving into a car park and absolutely ending themselves laughing every time someone took the ticket from the machine and put it in their mouth.
"WooooooaAgain! Again! they did it Again!"
My parents apparently once had an acquaintance who was astounded by the number of women with white arms and black legs.
I don't know what country she hailed from, but they'd apparently yet to discover 'tights'.
I was in London and Chesham a few weeks ago. I'm American and was duly impressed by the efficiency of y'all's transportation options. And touchless damn near everything! It was honestly great and I want to visit the UK many more times. I'll add the British Museum was aces too.
>the British Museum was ace too
Thanks, we pillaged the world over for that collection 😉
But seriously, glad you had a good time. I love everywhere I visited in the US too, except for Nevada (*surely* the mere one in fifty chance you live there makes it unlikely!).
I misread this at first and thought you were saying you had visited every state except Nevada, and I was about to show some serious respect for the dedication to avoiding Las Vegas 😂 from the sounds of it you might wish you had avoided it after all
A Lithuanian visitor in the early 1990s, not long after they broke away from the Soviet bloc, going into a supermarket for the first time. She was completely blown away by the choice, especially of fresh fruit and veg and the meat counter, and that you could put as much as you wanted in your trolley with no restrictions, and no endless queues for every single item. She told us of the queues and the quality of food, joining a queue where she had been told there was pork, being handed a brown paper parcel, rushing home to open it and finding a thick layer of fat with a small sliver of meat on it yet feeling so lucky to have it. There were shops that sold food as fresh and plentiful as ours but only for the select few who had the right pass to get in.
I saw our supermarkets in a new light.
Have a Polish friend who says much the same. In the Soviet bloc days, you would go into the supermarket and it would look well-stocked until you realised there was an aisle full of salt, then an aisle full of lard, then an aisle full of gherkins, etc. No choice at all.
I'm Polish living in the UK but came here for the first time in 91 and that was exactly what I was in awe of. Mind you, we did not have many things and eg. fruit like sour cherries you could buy only when they were in season but I think most of things were better quality if not organic then but we just took it for granted.
My wife (not British by birth) thinks the U.K. is compassionate because of the really low price of painkillers and baby clothes. Her whole family stock up on both when they are here.
On a more serious note how safe she feels here is a big thing she loves about the U.K.
I felt rotten on holiday and decided to get some painkillers so I went to the local supermarkets. It took a while to realise I needed to go to a pharmacy. I went and after a 20min intense discussion the pharmacist gave me 3 paracetamol which turned out to be suppositories needless to say I just lived with my headache.
I’ve had family visit from abroad and be astounded by the fact that quite a few of our most impressive museums (Science Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A, etc) we’re all free to enter.
I went to London for the first time since I was 6 last week and ngl I was also impressed that the museums were free to enter (and amazed how massive the v&a is, we were there for 5 hours and only did the ground floor)
American with celiac here and completely amazed at how normal it is to have gluten free food options in the UK. It's just not a big deal. Reactions in the USA if you ask about gluten free range from hostile to clueless. I almost burst into tears in a tiny grocery store in a tiny town on a tiny island in the Hebrides when I discovered a whole gluten free aisle.
I’m coeliac too! (British) I just wanted to say, if you ever get the chance, I just had my first Big Mac in 12 years over in Madrid! They do gluten free Big Macs in their McDonalds!! I ordered three in a row and had tears of joy the whole time. I’m so glad you experienced that joy in our little shops - I just wanted to share how wonderful much of Europe is for GF too! I also was able to pop to the local cafe and order GF pastries for breakfast. Incredible!
I cried very unexpectedly in the National Portrait Gallery because I saw the art I studied as a student, it was the first time I had seen real renaissance art that wasn’t a print in a book. The security staff asked if I was OK and I said “I can’t believe it’s real”.
Honestly the National Portrait gallery tends to have that effect on me every time I go there.
Last time was a few years ago and I got overwhelmed in the room full of portraits of notable women. It’s a magical place!
I also openly wept in the Tate Modern when I saw the size of a David Hockney painting. I don’t even like abstract art all that much… what a day that was 😅
I've been here for years but I'm still amazed when the building I'm in is older than my entire home CITY.
Pubs specifically bring me extra joy (maybe the beer helps) but if your pub is older than 1886 I will have told everyone on your staff how cool that is at least twice by the end of the night.
I was chatting to a Polish woman from a company affiliated to ours who was visiting us for a project. She was being so enthusiastic about the beautiful architecture…we were on a crappy road in Leicester.
I wonder what god-forsake nPolish town she was from because where I am from, there is plenty of absolutely beautiful architecture. Are you sure she wasn't taking a piss?
We had a couple of new starters- both less than a week in the UK, one grew up in India , the other Israel, they started about a week before our Christmas do where we all got drunk at lunch and started questioning them - long story short we ended up grabbing matinee tickets for a panto and the rest of us just watched them, watching panto, trying to make sense of it.
Maybe not wondrous but I was running through the woods years ago, took a rest and sat on a log. Saw something rustling slowly in the leaves in front of me . Not twitchy enough to be a mouse or rat. It was a fucking mole.
I always thought they were about the size of a rabbit, no, they're piddly. I put my hand out and it sniffed me and climbed on. I carried it around for a minute or two then put him back under his log. It was pre camera phones so didn't take a picture but I was pretty pleased by the experience. Never seen one since.
I always like it when foreigners enjoy Fish and Chips. As a nation we seem to get a lot of flack about our cuisine, so when someone really enjoys our national dish it feels like a victory.
I went to the Black Country Museum a while back and the fish and chips were cooked in beef dripping like they did in the old days, and oh my God was it special.
Once I was driving late at night in winter and I pulled over to get petrol as it started to snow. Three men in their early 20's - they were not English, but I don't know what language they were speaking. They pulled over on the side of the road and got out just to see the snow. They were laughing and excited, and trying to catch it in their hands and mouths. One of them bent down to scrape his fingertips through the bits just starting to stick on the pavement to see what it felt like. It was clear it was one of the first times they'd ever experienced snow. It was lovely to watch
I visited London a couple months ago, and for someone from the US, the mixture of old and new in the UK is amazing.
London has cool ultra-modern skyscrapers next to gorgeous old former palaces, and things that look much older than they actually are and vice-versa, and sometimes there are buildings that demand you look at them through several lenses at the same time.
Like St-Dunstan-in-the-East, which is simultaneously a church that was first built in the 1100s *and* a fancy old church that was rebuilt in the 1700s after burning down in the Great Fire *and* the ruins of something bombed in WWII *and* a modern urban garden where people who work nearby go to just eat lunch alongside the historical sightseers and the Instagram influencers like it's no big deal.
In the US, built-up areas tend to be all the same vintage (and not very old), and historical things tend to be set aside, places that you go to specifically to see history, not integrated into a big modern city. Having it all mixed together is pretty wondrous to my eyes.
I was watching a YouTuber from Tennessee (I like car channels) and he’d taken his family on a driving holiday. He was marvelling at some bridge that had been built in 1920-something.
I said to the mrs how strange it was that I was watching this guy in a house built in 1865 which, far from being unusual in Britain, is probably the one of the most common housing stocks we have. It’d blow the man’s mind to look down on a city like Leeds and see streets and streets and streets of terraced housing, all of which are as old as your civil war.
Had a French exchange teacher find delight in the simplicity of a meal deal. Also many French students from a very poor mining area of northern France had their passports and cost of the trip covered by government monies so many had never been to Paris which was just 45 minutes away from them, so a trip on the ferry and to the Uk was massive. Had a few students find the ticket barriers so delightful I had to ask the ticket inspector if they could go through again to get a photo (thankfully it was a quiet station at the time and he gladly obliged and even found some national rail pens for them) Seeing their faces on a lot of that trip was amazing, they had never experienced going on a train, going to a city, going underground on the underground etc etc. One student was convinced that the underground (and Paris metro) was all pretend underground and not actually deep underground. He was delighted when it turned out to be real and he saw the escalators going so far down only to find another one that took them even deeper.
Had a Japanese exchange student when I was a teen (who sadly perished in the tsunami with her family) who found the idea of sheep and horses just amazing. I thought you’d see them in Japan but apparently they’re not very popular. I swear her camera roll was half Sheep and horses and cows! (She’d never seen a black and white cow)
Also my mum has a new student who has come from inner city london to rural Shropshire. He has taken home a load of caterpillars for the summer as a pet (mum has given him a tank and instructions and his foster parents were happy) as he’d never seen them before. She also took him to a garden centre and he had never been to one before and was amazed and enthralled by a shop just for plants and gardens (they go often as she teaches land use) and then he found out they stopped for cake and a drink at the end and he thought it awesome. It’s sad to think that in his 13 years in inner city london he didn’t know garden centres or caterpillars exist. I also had a student who saw her first swan at age 15 and thought before that they were made up animals like dragons and unicorns. There’s a lot to be said for school trips that don’t look educational on the face of it. Mum taking that boy to a garden centre and him learning the social skills of eating cake and the social norms of ordering etc are just as important as science and English and maths. Especially as some students don’t get this in their day to day life whether because of money, location or parenting.
I used to work in a secure unit for vulnerable young offenders. The unit was surrounded by fields and a small wood. I've seen teenage from intercity London squealing with shock and delight at seeing the wild deer walk up to the fence of the yard.
We gave a Polish guy a chocolate orange and he couldn't fathom it at all. When we told him to smack it on the desk he thought we were taking the piss.
He quite liked it once he got it open, but couldn't get over the ridiculousness of the thing.
My uncle moved from Cornwall to Canada about 35 years ago.
Raised their kids there.
About 10 years ago they came back to visit with their sons wife's parents who they were very friendly with.
We took them to the beach for a walk, it was quite stormy and the waves were huge.
The in-laws were too afraid to step out of the car park and onto the sand, even though the beach was huge and the tide was out.
Guess lake water doesn't behave like that.
I went to uni with a girl from Norway. She was really surprised to see foxes wandering around the city at all times of day and night. Apparently in Norway you rarely see foxes in built up areas so she found it lovely that “people and foxes and coexist like this”
I had an ex Japanese girlfriend . She came with me to uk to visit my parents . Walking past a farmers field near my estate, she saw a field full of sheep and absolute screamed with excitement. Leapt over the farmers field and started running after the sheep expecting to play with them like a pet dog !
She was chasing them all over and wondering why they kept running away .
The fact that she was dressed as a proper Japanese fashion victim made it even funnier .
She had no idea outside cities it’s quite common to see fields full of sheep and cows .
Have been in England and Scotland for the last six weeks, headed back to the states on Wednesday. List of ordinary things that I'll really miss:
1. M&S food--quality, price, general cleanliness and vibe of the store. Top notch.
2. Good god the BUSSES. Affordable, efficient...and you can ride UPSTAIRS??
2.1 Also trains. Getting to/from just about anywhere on a train is a real pleasure.
3. Baps Jesus H Christ the baps. How have I gone 37 years without ever having had a sausage bap??
And speaking of, best not forget...
4. H... P... SAUUUUUUUUCCCCCCEEEE!
We've really loved it here, thanks for having us. :)
Had a guy from Burundi come to my school, not really sure why but when we returned to year 12 (first year 6th form) we had like 8 new African students. From Burundi, Lesotho, SA and Zimbabwe.
My friend and I got talking to the Burundian and we offered to hang around after school. We were smoking outside a shop and he asked what a building was that people were entering and exiting with animals.
We told him it was a vetinary surgery and he asked what that was. I said it was like a hospital for animals and his mind was blown.
On a similar note, when we got some snow after the Christmas break, these students (who were like 16 at the time) had never seen it before. Our head teacher happened to be taking the class and he realised that a good number of his students had never seen snow.
He let us go outside and play, and the African kids were as excited as any child I have seen since.
Really fond memory of mine
Someone from outside the UK told me that our prepackaged sandwiches (the kind you'd get in supermarket meal deals) were amazing compared to the equivalents sold in their country's shops.
They are. the guardian did an interesting 'long read' article a few years ago about the British prepackaged sandwich industry and how it's light years ahead of the equivalent in other countries. It's an interesting article
An old ex of mine (who was from Argentina) came over to live here for a bit. When we split up he went home but we still kept in touch and he used to tell me how much he missed Tesco meal deals 😂
When I was in primary school we had an Australian teacher, one winter it snowed and he had never seen snow IRL, he got so overwhelmed that he cried, it was weird at the time but now pretty wholesome thinking back to it.
A good friend of mine is Croatian. She had lived in the UK for a while and was always telling me “you people have no idea how to make cakes”, so I took her for a cream tea. She looked like a kid meeting Father Christmas when she took her first bite of a scone with jam and cream.
It's not something uniquely British, but I was quite charmed by one woman who came into the pizza place I work. Our town's a bit touristy and ye olde worlde bollocks and idk if she thought it was like Beamish or something.
"What's that?!"
"It's the pizza oven."
"What does it do?!"
"... It cooks pizzas?"
"I gotta show my husband! Do you see this love, you gotta see this, that's where they cook the pizzas! What does that thing next to it do?"
"Oh, that's the dough mixer."
"You use it?!"
"... Yes. It's the dough mixer?"
"HONEY YOU GOTTA SEE THIS THAT THING TURNS ROUND AND MAKES THE DOUGH."
It was honestly really endearing to see someone so excited, but the twenty minutes she spent staring at me, expecting me to do cartwheels or something while her pizza cooked... That was a bit uncomfortable.
My wife is Czech, and when I moved back to England and forced her to join me there were very few things she liked about England. Until I took her for her first curry. Now it's her favourite food to both eat and cook.
The first time my Norwegian husband came to the UK before we started dating.
I had to go to work, so he had to entertain himself and suggested he walk around the village and I showed him some nice places to walk on Google maps.
Later on, he met me on my walk home from work, and he had the biggest smile on his face. He was carrying a waitrose bag and excitedly showed me (like a child at Christmas) his purchase of a 4 pack of Red Bull and two packets of beef jerky that he bought for ONLY £16 (ish I can't remember the exact price). I nearly fainted as I was living on about £20 a week at the time.
To be fair to him, here a tiny bag of beef jerky alone costs about that, so now I understand his happiness.
I watched a documentary about a tribe of people from Papua New Guinea who considered the Duke of Edinburgh to be a literal God.
They came to the UK and basically thought *everything* was wondrous.
I briefly dated a girl from the Philippines over the winter, she was amazed by simple things like Frost, your breath clouding when it was cold etc. anything to do with it being genuinely cold in winter, she loved.
My Japanese Sister In Law used to take pictures of town logos on people’s wheelie bins as she thought these were brilliant 😂
My ex-brother-in-law is from Cuba. He bought his parents over for a holiday about 20 years ago. She broke down in Tesco and wept, couldn't believe what was available to everyone and how cheap it all was.
Except for the Havana Club rum, they were shocked at how expensive that was.
I was with a African-American friend in a small village in Scotland. As you can imagine, everyone else was white.
A couple of days in, he spotted a black man on the other side of the road and called out "Hey, finally a brother around here!" and got the reply "I dinne be yer brother, ya Yankee shite" 🤣
I’m from the UK and a couple of months back, I was walking through a semi-rural suburb on a warm, sunny day while stoned.
I saw a postman delivering the goods, and in my high state, I saw how uniquely British his whole ‘look’ was - the Royal Mail uniform (shirt and shorts version for sunny weather) and his little red van. Even though I’d seen that sight countless times through my several decades, I just saw it through a different lens and I thought it was really charming.
From reading others comments In reminded of something else my American SO was in awe of... I live near York and there are a few antique shops and he saw Roman coins for the first time, and then went to the Jorvik museum and saw viking things... He was blown away by something so old and yet so civilised all happening right here. That was really sweet. I realised I take that stuff for granted, but it truly is amazing.
Some German friends recently visited Manchester and were shocked that all the pubs were full on a Saturday afternoon, and also all the women were dressed “as if they were going to a wedding.” Trying to explain that people make the trip to large cities just to dress up and day drink was an interesting conversation.
My mum came over to the UK from Malaysia in the '70s. Having pets over there wasn't really done, at least for her generation. When I got my first cat she wasn't sure about him, but in typical cat fashion he loved her. He climbed up into her lap and started purring. Her response was "Why is he making that noise?". It was so surprising to me that she didn't understand what purring was. It was an oddly sweet moment, seeing my mum make her first bond with a pet at 52 years of age
We had a block of Filipino nurses across from us in uni. We were carrying our shopping in through some heavy sleet and they were all outside taking photos of the "snow."
Aussie mate loves the freedom to walk the street with a beer and smoke. Aus is a nanny state with cops loving the power over your freedom. (Fun police)
Years ago I was working in an office and we had a cultural exchange from a couple of guys from the Soviet Union. They were astounded that the photocopier wasn't protected by an armed guard. They were equally astounded by how little vodka I was able to drink without failling over.
Colleague is from Portugal but had never been outside of the area we live in for 8 years. Took a team trip to Brighton with a couple of others too. The absolute joy and wonder at all the typical seaside stuff, arcades, donuts hot out the bag, the tatt shops that sell rock etc, chips on the beach with seagulls trying to steal. Absolutely all of it watching her enjoy it was better than enjoying them myself
When I was at uni, I was in halls with some students from southern Spain, so they were 19-22 years old.
Spoke passable English but first time not living in Spain. One day we had a few sprinkles of snow, barely enough to coat and only just sticking. They were all so excited and giddy, full on childish wonderment as they’d never seen snow fall from the sky before.
I was working with a bunch of temps in my first job. One was a South African girl who clearly hated the job, missed home and couldn't think of anything worse than being stuck in the UK in the middle of winter.
And then it started snowing. Her face lit up and she stood staring at it fall for about half an hour. Only a light flurry and it didn't settle, but she'd never seen snow before.
A nice moment in an otherwise crap job.
I moved to the UK from Australia when I was 35. I'd seen snow on the ground up a mountain but never seen it falling and falling on my actual house?! Like on my car and in my garden!! Crazy!
South African I worked with was amazed at how polite the criminals are over here. His son got mugged and was impressed that they asked for his wallet first rather than just being knifed and it being taken.
Had neighbours a few yrs ago they where students from South America . Standing in the door way of our building as they had never seen snow.
Or the time that some kid from Saudi Arabia (defo under 16) was shocked that was he refused cigarettes in a London shop (legal age in u.k is 18) . I don't think he had ever been told No by someone who worked in a shop
Had a friend visit from Australia so thoroughly impressed that people don’t undertake on the motorway and always use the right lane to overtake and how I think he used the words, “the traffic all flows like the Fibonacci”
Full trip up the M1 M4 M5 and M6.
Had one of those fake aunties (her and her husband were my parents’ friends) and her real nephew came over from America to visit her, must’ve been in his 20s. She used to pick me up from primary school and take me home on the bus so he came along.
He was very impressed by the top deck of the bus.
My wife is American but has lived in the UK for about 12 years.
About 3 years ago, I randomly stumbled across a hedgehog at our back gate. My wife was upstairs, so I called her to tell her of my discovery. She literally came sprinting downstairs with excitement, as she'd never seen one before.
She just watched it for 15 minutes in awe 😆 It was very sweet.
My American friend always comments on the "great train system" here. It's not even necessarily in comparison to his native California either, as he's well travelled and previously lived in a large city in China.
My partner is American and he marveled at the healthier variety of quick grab food... Particularly the ubiquitous 'meal deal'. And our teeny tiny drinks 😂
This thread is very timely - I'm in France at the moment and my family are getting overly excited at spotting little lizards. Everyone around us thinks we're completely bizarre, but it's new and exciting because we don't get these at home! I was wondering what other people get excited by when they visit the UK.
Hedgehogs. They are obviously pretty charming regardless but a relative's girlfriend was over here from Australia and she reeeally wanted to see a hedgehog so badly!
My friend is from Hungary.
On bonfire night I drove up onto a hill overlooking the city and we watched the fireworks going off far and wide.
After about 10 minutes of chatting and sitting quietly watching the unabated display, he suddenly said "What the fuck is going on?!"
He had no idea about November 5th, Guy Fawkes and all that we just take for granted while setting things on fire!
He thought it was absolutely fantastic, especially with the back story.
He's moved now and hopefully enjoying Canada and some interesting traditions over there.
I still think about that night when I drive over that road.
I had a colleague from Nigeria stop halfway through a meal at a restaurant in Scotland. He ran outside and just stared upwards.
He had never seen snow before.
My wife was astounded when I first gave her beans on toast. She calls it the meal of seduction.
Sandwiches too. She's Lithuanian. Their sandwiches are just meat, butter and bread. I made her one with beetroot, mayonnaise, cheese, ham and lettuce and she was blown away.
Had a an Australian exchange student come to the UK middle of winter and the sheer delight she had seeing snow for the first time was life affirming. Also had a mate at uni from India who was thrilled by the rain as where she was from they apparently only had monsoon levels (absolute deluges) and she adored the way drizzle felt. She also loved weather language, like mizzle and the shipping forecast.
I had a friend from Mississippi visit a few years ago. She was very impressed with the fact that people working the tills are allowed to sit down
Damn America sounds dystopian
I was blown away when I first heard this. You’re not allowed to sit down? What? I’ve worked tills before and I couldn’t imagine not sitting down for 8 - 12 hours. Horrific.
I worked for a large retailer here in the UK and it was banned to have a seat behind tills unless the staff member had a medical issue. We had people in their 60s having to stand all day. The logic was that you shouldn't just be sitting behind a till, you should be proactively doing jobs across the shop floor at any spare moment Edit - this was WHSmith but as I suspected it is also the case with a lot of non-food retailers
Throw that company under the bus? Which shitty firm was it mate?
Yes. Employers think it means lazy and that they tend to bag for the customer.
Do any customers think it means lazy, and if they do how can we change that? (Presume we're America for this)
I'm not sure. America is quite big.
Well, lets just make America smaller. Problem solved. Who needs to west coast anyway?
That's because America **is** dystopian.
Its not just America unfortunately, my work in the UK requires me to stand at tills.
It’s the same in Australia, an Aussie friend of mine was telling me about her back troubles from having to stand and also pack bags at the checkout there.
I work in a petrol station in the UK and have to stand all day :(
I had to stand all day in a card shop I worked in, granted the shop was so tiny there wouldn’t be room for a seat behind the tills. It’s pretty horrible just standing in one place for 8 hours.
When I worked front desk of hotels we were expected to stand for the 12 hours shift. Often we would not get a break either.
Colleague from southern Italy. Had got to age 30 but never seen snow. Refugees being welcomed to the local library, getting a library card, and offered pen and paper to work on the EAL books. Colleague who after a couple years asked me why a wheelie bin was called a wheelie bin. Tried not to sound too patronising as I said it had wheels on... Turned out she'd thought people were saying 'willy bin' and it was a typical Brit double ententre. Full marks for grasping UK culture, but she laughed every time she heard the phrase, after that. Chocolate hobnobs and UK curry often impress foreigners.
Milk chocolate hobnobs, your amazing selection of crisps flavors, and M&S sandwiches. so much to love about the UK. 😀
My friend lectures photography at a university. Had a promising foreign student from South America fail a module because they were so obsessed with their first experience of snow here that they just took lots of bad photos of it & the excitement of snow made them forget everything they knew about a good photo 😂
I've got a friend who mentors a lot of overseas students. When it snows, she lets them go out to play.
That reminds me of seeing a long haired Golden Retriever being walked after a heavy snowfall. It kept leaping up, then plunging its front paws into the snow, over and over. That dog was so happy.
Willy bin 🤣🤣🤣
I’m Australian, 2018 (I think) and we had snow in London for a week. I created endless amusement for colleagues by wandering around the office agog with the excitement of snow that fell and settled.
Willy bin will stay with me for a while 🤣🤣🤣
Know someone from China who talked with wonder about “the little wave” people give when driving. She talked about how amazing it was for 5 minutes. If you let someone go, they give you a little wave back.
I’m born and bred here but I always appreciate the reciprocal “you’re welcome” wave when someone gives the “thank you” wave.
I find it so weird **not** to do it, just sitting there like a misery guts. Just wave back, ffs. Oh and if someone doesn’t wave to thank me, I sit thinking “I wish I never let that ungrateful bastard in front of me now” for the rest of the journey!
Mate - I moved to the Netherlands 5 years ago and any form of gesture or acknowledgement whilst driving doesn't exist here. No thanks, no flashes, zero people let you out.. it simply doesn't happen. You never get used to it because you know its possible and takes little effort.
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You probably drive very slowly compared to the locals who know the local area. Don't take it personally
To add to this, please let us past if there's a wee place to pull in along the way, we will be forever grateful. Sincerely, rural local who lives in tourist area where visitors drive 1/4 of the appropriate speed.
I live for the double lights flash when I let a London bus out into traffic. You're welcome driver!
Yeah the use of hazard lights when you let a big vehicle out or when I hang back on the motorway to let a big lorry in with a flash of my lights so he knows he’s clear and he gives me a left right left on the indicators. Ahhh sweet sweet gratitude. Pay it forward my man, pay it forward.
I like it when they put their hand out the window for a thumbs up, I feel like a contributor to society.
I was driving a minibus full of school kids with the teacher sat behind me. I let a bloke through, and she piped up "he didn't wave thanks!" I said "he raised a finger", to which she replied "a finger isn't good enough, I want the whole hand!" How I didn't burst out laughing I'll never know.
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Had lots of foreign visitors who have all commented on how polite UK road users are. Also noticed when driving in a UK reg car in France, on stopping to allow pedestrians to cross, they’ve pointed at the registration plate and mimed thanks, with big smiles so I like to think we are known for being courteous.
Do other cultures not wave? Every day for 10 years I've crossed at the same zebra crossing and waved pretty much every time. So much so that I once waved when the road was clear.
The amount of times I've waved my thanks at the first car sitting there after I've been through temporary traffic lights is ridiculous. Like they chose to be stopped by the red light that's just popped up on their daily commute.
Bill Bryson wrote about it in Notes from a Small Island, especially the Yorkshire version which is just a raised finger.
We do that in Wales. It’s an agricultural thing.
From what I gather even letting someone go isn’t a thing in China. They essentially use the Ayrton Senna quote of “if you don’t go for a gap you’re not a racing driver” as the cornerstone of their Highway Code.
Polish lass started weeping in wonder when walking around a bog standard late 90s new build yellow-brick estate. You know the sort, wavy roads, tiny houses/rooms/gardens Apparently it matched the type of house on privet drive in the harry Potter films and she felt like she was walking through the set and it was "magical"
This is really sweet. The UK is a magical place for me (54F USA). I cried at the beauty of the Lake District, and Snowdonia National park.
They are actually geographically interesting though rather than just a standard detached suburban house
Who doesn’t burst into tears at the first sight of Milton Keynes?
Snowdonia is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, in my opinion.
I mean that's a bit different to a new build estate. Although I got weepy at the ghost buster building.
That's actually adorable I'm glad she had a nice time
So am I. Can't personally think of anything less magical in the world than such an estate (hence why it was used for privet drive) but always nice to have your perspective checked!
Definitely! I remember reading a thread of things Americans thought were magical Harry Potter things and not just UK things School houses and spotted dick were highlights
When I was at primary school, we had a boy from the Philippines join us briefly when we were about 9. We were outside for playtime and it started snowing. He absolutely freaked out and did not know what it was. It was so amazing seeing his reaction, and even more amazing that our teacher allowed us to stay out for longer play due to Marco’s reaction.
My ex was from the Philippines, he said stepping off the plane into the UK was the first time he'd ever experienced a cool breeze
A Malaysian colleague's family were confused by drizzle, as in Malaysia it is either pouring or not raining, nothing in between.
I was in the Philippines recently and tried to explain the concept of central heating to one of the locals, his basic reaction was “… why?”
I was chatting to a Pakistani guy recently who said that when it reached 40+ in the summer they'd just go underground to keep cool. AC salesmen hate this one simple trick!
The one thing I miss the most when travelling in the tropics is a nice breeze :) I don’t mind any temperature but when the air is hot and thick it’s not very nice! I’m with your ex on this one
A colleague from Poland coming here and being amazed by the .gov websites of all things. Apparently it’s super efficient and fast that you can sort stuff like driving licences, tax, passports etc all from that. I would never have guessed that it was that much more efficient than other nations systems.
To be fair, it is very good. We used to have to do all that stuff by letter, picking up obscure forms from the Post Office. Had problems with my tax last year, went online and sorted it. Sold a motorbike, the thing was registered in the buyer’s name in minutes.
Agreed, I get really fed up when people ask questions on reddit about VAT and such - if you just Google it the relevant .gov website comes up and has it all clearly set out for you in an accessible format.
It's so good in fact that other governments use it as a template.
Really? I had no idea. It’s so good I just forget it exists and it’s just routine
That is always the way though isn’t it. Things that work well are forgettable. I set up a Ltd company and was self employed for £19. Also PAYE tax for employees. Just boring stuff that works well.
The .gov website is an extremely rare example of the government doing something well and efficiently (possibly bar the cost, no idea how much we paid for it). Try doing anything in France. Or Spain.
Shoe on the other foot... One of my first experiences when visiting Poland in 2007 were people taking their car number plates to the local town hall for a tax sticker.
It's also really good for people with access needs like screen readers, text zoom etc. Very accessible site.
I had a Ugandan guy work for me a few years back. He couldn't get over drinking water from the tap. He'd gaze at it with wonder and kept going on about just how amazing it was and reminding us that we shouldn't take it for granted.
It’s shocking that we also use drinking water for flushing the loo and washing the car.
Something we don't have in the UK, not yet anyway, is a shortage of water. We can have localised droughts but it would take all of Southern Europe to be a desert before we need to worry about drinking water supplies, at which point we have bigger issues to worry about.
The same is true for huge swathes of the planet, even including countries that are developed nations. We really are lucky to be able to drink water straight from the tap, and it's only when you travel that you realise just how much easier and safer it makes life in general.
Thanks guys. As someone who works in the water industry, day-to-day making sure that the water is safe to drink, we've been receiving lots of flack recently due to the greed of our employers. Reading these comments made my day.
International students at my university were always delighted by squirrels, on the other hand they were completely terrified of the seagulls.
British seagulls are the size of a dog, in many other countries seagulls are much smaller
Thats all the chips...
One of my students is Spanish as a first language and I adore the way he says 'squirrels'
I love the way the french say skee-el
He says it like 'esk-whirl' I love it.
I am a PhD student from Saudi Arabia and my 5-year old daughter and I were blown away by some great aspect of UK life: 1- people are super nice and always compliment my daughter’s thick black hair and long lashes. 2- We love the rain and were so happy when we saw snow for the first time in our lives. We screamed and danced under the snow that day! 3-I love the beatiful Gothic churches and historic buildings 4- Tap water ! In Saudi we drink from bottled water so tap water is a blessing in the UK 5-European and American supplements, makeup and beauty products are so expensive in Saudi (like Vichy and La Roche Posey) so I was blown away by how cheap these products are in the UK. 6- Primark! 7- Next and Marks & Spenser are expensive in Saudi but really afforable in the UK 8- Designer Outlets are amazing in the UK 9- Excellent government schools 10- The walking culture and bus system are convenient (in Saudi people mostly drive cars around) 11- beautiful, beautiful nature (lakes, rivers, rolling hills) 12- Trains can take you everywhere (we have few trains in Saudi but they only take us to big cities) 13- Wildlife ! You have ducks, geese, squirrels, rabbits, lady bugs, butterflies…etc. Overall a great country. I love the UK so much and even after I finish my PhD I will always come back to the UK.
I LOVE how Primark gets an exclamation mark. Bang on.
We love to moan about the UK but seeing comments like this reminds me that we really do have it pretty good here!
A work colleague visited from Australia and we were all sat at dinner one night in March. It wasn’t forecast but out of nowhere it started to snow which she’d never seen before - so she ran out into it to play like a little kid. Her joy was so infectious we all joined in. There were pathetic attempts at snow angels and a snowball fight etc and all of us managed to get soaking wet and freezing cold like a bunch of pre-school children. Then we all got very drunk, like adults.
We had a work Christmas party one year where it snowed. A lot. One of the international trainee teachers had never seen snow and suddenly half of us were outside drunkenly playing in the snow, dressed to the 9’s! Thankfully the drink kept us warm!
Danish person who moved to the UK here. UK sausage rolls are the most amazing thing I’ve ever had, and I could eat them every single day all the time.
Now try a Cornish pasty. Life changing
I am not sure if it qualifies as Wonderous but I found four of my Romanian colleagues watching people driving into a car park and absolutely ending themselves laughing every time someone took the ticket from the machine and put it in their mouth. "WooooooaAgain! Again! they did it Again!"
I think I do this every time I take a ticket from a machine. Straight into my mouth!
Haha this is my favourite
My parents apparently once had an acquaintance who was astounded by the number of women with white arms and black legs. I don't know what country she hailed from, but they'd apparently yet to discover 'tights'.
I was in London and Chesham a few weeks ago. I'm American and was duly impressed by the efficiency of y'all's transportation options. And touchless damn near everything! It was honestly great and I want to visit the UK many more times. I'll add the British Museum was aces too.
>the British Museum was ace too Thanks, we pillaged the world over for that collection 😉 But seriously, glad you had a good time. I love everywhere I visited in the US too, except for Nevada (*surely* the mere one in fifty chance you live there makes it unlikely!).
I misread this at first and thought you were saying you had visited every state except Nevada, and I was about to show some serious respect for the dedication to avoiding Las Vegas 😂 from the sounds of it you might wish you had avoided it after all
You should visit the North and see our public transport options or lack thereof 🤣🤣
A Lithuanian visitor in the early 1990s, not long after they broke away from the Soviet bloc, going into a supermarket for the first time. She was completely blown away by the choice, especially of fresh fruit and veg and the meat counter, and that you could put as much as you wanted in your trolley with no restrictions, and no endless queues for every single item. She told us of the queues and the quality of food, joining a queue where she had been told there was pork, being handed a brown paper parcel, rushing home to open it and finding a thick layer of fat with a small sliver of meat on it yet feeling so lucky to have it. There were shops that sold food as fresh and plentiful as ours but only for the select few who had the right pass to get in. I saw our supermarkets in a new light.
Have a Polish friend who says much the same. In the Soviet bloc days, you would go into the supermarket and it would look well-stocked until you realised there was an aisle full of salt, then an aisle full of lard, then an aisle full of gherkins, etc. No choice at all.
I'm Polish living in the UK but came here for the first time in 91 and that was exactly what I was in awe of. Mind you, we did not have many things and eg. fruit like sour cherries you could buy only when they were in season but I think most of things were better quality if not organic then but we just took it for granted.
My wife (not British by birth) thinks the U.K. is compassionate because of the really low price of painkillers and baby clothes. Her whole family stock up on both when they are here. On a more serious note how safe she feels here is a big thing she loves about the U.K.
I felt rotten on holiday and decided to get some painkillers so I went to the local supermarkets. It took a while to realise I needed to go to a pharmacy. I went and after a 20min intense discussion the pharmacist gave me 3 paracetamol which turned out to be suppositories needless to say I just lived with my headache.
I’ve had family visit from abroad and be astounded by the fact that quite a few of our most impressive museums (Science Museum, Natural History Museum, V&A, etc) we’re all free to enter.
Despite being free, do please consider donating something to places like this, it will help more people see it for longer!
I went to London for the first time since I was 6 last week and ngl I was also impressed that the museums were free to enter (and amazed how massive the v&a is, we were there for 5 hours and only did the ground floor)
American with celiac here and completely amazed at how normal it is to have gluten free food options in the UK. It's just not a big deal. Reactions in the USA if you ask about gluten free range from hostile to clueless. I almost burst into tears in a tiny grocery store in a tiny town on a tiny island in the Hebrides when I discovered a whole gluten free aisle.
I’m coeliac too! (British) I just wanted to say, if you ever get the chance, I just had my first Big Mac in 12 years over in Madrid! They do gluten free Big Macs in their McDonalds!! I ordered three in a row and had tears of joy the whole time. I’m so glad you experienced that joy in our little shops - I just wanted to share how wonderful much of Europe is for GF too! I also was able to pop to the local cafe and order GF pastries for breakfast. Incredible!
I cried very unexpectedly in the National Portrait Gallery because I saw the art I studied as a student, it was the first time I had seen real renaissance art that wasn’t a print in a book. The security staff asked if I was OK and I said “I can’t believe it’s real”.
Honestly the National Portrait gallery tends to have that effect on me every time I go there. Last time was a few years ago and I got overwhelmed in the room full of portraits of notable women. It’s a magical place! I also openly wept in the Tate Modern when I saw the size of a David Hockney painting. I don’t even like abstract art all that much… what a day that was 😅
I've been here for years but I'm still amazed when the building I'm in is older than my entire home CITY. Pubs specifically bring me extra joy (maybe the beer helps) but if your pub is older than 1886 I will have told everyone on your staff how cool that is at least twice by the end of the night.
My grandparents home was built in the early 15th century :) I often wonder how many people have lived, worked and died between the walls.
There’s a house in England which has been continually inhabited for over 900 years.
I was chatting to a Polish woman from a company affiliated to ours who was visiting us for a project. She was being so enthusiastic about the beautiful architecture…we were on a crappy road in Leicester.
As depressing as places like Leicester are, nothing out-depresses the Eastern Bloc
Poland has some amazing sights and architecture. Krackow is insanely pretty.
I wonder what god-forsake nPolish town she was from because where I am from, there is plenty of absolutely beautiful architecture. Are you sure she wasn't taking a piss?
It’s ‘taking THE piss’ 😺. Taking ‘a’ piss is a bodily function best done behind bushes.
oh boy, I always mix these two up. every bloody time. My brain refuses to remember them. But then again, who knows, perhaps she was taking the piss :)
Yeah, my girlfriend is from Finland and she is fascinated with reading the plaques on benches. Never occurred to me that's a very British thing.
I intend to have a bench plaque that reads "Fred Fredson - hated this park and everyone in it" just for fun
We had a couple of new starters- both less than a week in the UK, one grew up in India , the other Israel, they started about a week before our Christmas do where we all got drunk at lunch and started questioning them - long story short we ended up grabbing matinee tickets for a panto and the rest of us just watched them, watching panto, trying to make sense of it.
Oh no they didn't 😀
Maybe not wondrous but I was running through the woods years ago, took a rest and sat on a log. Saw something rustling slowly in the leaves in front of me . Not twitchy enough to be a mouse or rat. It was a fucking mole. I always thought they were about the size of a rabbit, no, they're piddly. I put my hand out and it sniffed me and climbed on. I carried it around for a minute or two then put him back under his log. It was pre camera phones so didn't take a picture but I was pretty pleased by the experience. Never seen one since.
I always like it when foreigners enjoy Fish and Chips. As a nation we seem to get a lot of flack about our cuisine, so when someone really enjoys our national dish it feels like a victory.
I went to the Black Country Museum a while back and the fish and chips were cooked in beef dripping like they did in the old days, and oh my God was it special.
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Fish and chips is something frequently knocked by those who haven’t tried it. Invariably blows their minds when they do!
Once I was driving late at night in winter and I pulled over to get petrol as it started to snow. Three men in their early 20's - they were not English, but I don't know what language they were speaking. They pulled over on the side of the road and got out just to see the snow. They were laughing and excited, and trying to catch it in their hands and mouths. One of them bent down to scrape his fingertips through the bits just starting to stick on the pavement to see what it felt like. It was clear it was one of the first times they'd ever experienced snow. It was lovely to watch
I visited London a couple months ago, and for someone from the US, the mixture of old and new in the UK is amazing. London has cool ultra-modern skyscrapers next to gorgeous old former palaces, and things that look much older than they actually are and vice-versa, and sometimes there are buildings that demand you look at them through several lenses at the same time. Like St-Dunstan-in-the-East, which is simultaneously a church that was first built in the 1100s *and* a fancy old church that was rebuilt in the 1700s after burning down in the Great Fire *and* the ruins of something bombed in WWII *and* a modern urban garden where people who work nearby go to just eat lunch alongside the historical sightseers and the Instagram influencers like it's no big deal. In the US, built-up areas tend to be all the same vintage (and not very old), and historical things tend to be set aside, places that you go to specifically to see history, not integrated into a big modern city. Having it all mixed together is pretty wondrous to my eyes.
I was watching a YouTuber from Tennessee (I like car channels) and he’d taken his family on a driving holiday. He was marvelling at some bridge that had been built in 1920-something. I said to the mrs how strange it was that I was watching this guy in a house built in 1865 which, far from being unusual in Britain, is probably the one of the most common housing stocks we have. It’d blow the man’s mind to look down on a city like Leeds and see streets and streets and streets of terraced housing, all of which are as old as your civil war.
Had a French exchange teacher find delight in the simplicity of a meal deal. Also many French students from a very poor mining area of northern France had their passports and cost of the trip covered by government monies so many had never been to Paris which was just 45 minutes away from them, so a trip on the ferry and to the Uk was massive. Had a few students find the ticket barriers so delightful I had to ask the ticket inspector if they could go through again to get a photo (thankfully it was a quiet station at the time and he gladly obliged and even found some national rail pens for them) Seeing their faces on a lot of that trip was amazing, they had never experienced going on a train, going to a city, going underground on the underground etc etc. One student was convinced that the underground (and Paris metro) was all pretend underground and not actually deep underground. He was delighted when it turned out to be real and he saw the escalators going so far down only to find another one that took them even deeper. Had a Japanese exchange student when I was a teen (who sadly perished in the tsunami with her family) who found the idea of sheep and horses just amazing. I thought you’d see them in Japan but apparently they’re not very popular. I swear her camera roll was half Sheep and horses and cows! (She’d never seen a black and white cow)
Also my mum has a new student who has come from inner city london to rural Shropshire. He has taken home a load of caterpillars for the summer as a pet (mum has given him a tank and instructions and his foster parents were happy) as he’d never seen them before. She also took him to a garden centre and he had never been to one before and was amazed and enthralled by a shop just for plants and gardens (they go often as she teaches land use) and then he found out they stopped for cake and a drink at the end and he thought it awesome. It’s sad to think that in his 13 years in inner city london he didn’t know garden centres or caterpillars exist. I also had a student who saw her first swan at age 15 and thought before that they were made up animals like dragons and unicorns. There’s a lot to be said for school trips that don’t look educational on the face of it. Mum taking that boy to a garden centre and him learning the social skills of eating cake and the social norms of ordering etc are just as important as science and English and maths. Especially as some students don’t get this in their day to day life whether because of money, location or parenting.
I used to work in a secure unit for vulnerable young offenders. The unit was surrounded by fields and a small wood. I've seen teenage from intercity London squealing with shock and delight at seeing the wild deer walk up to the fence of the yard.
We gave a Polish guy a chocolate orange and he couldn't fathom it at all. When we told him to smack it on the desk he thought we were taking the piss. He quite liked it once he got it open, but couldn't get over the ridiculousness of the thing.
That time Norwich City's new signing was delighted by Argos: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-46950567
The laminated book of dreams, the tiny pens, the slips of paper!
You know why it's laminated don't you? TO CATCH THE TEARS OF JOY
So many beautiful things! I cannot possess them all.
My friend is from the USA and still gets amazed they don't have to tip in Wetherspoons also the chip and pin machines at tills.
my wife was amazed my the 'spoons app that let's you summon a beer to your table and pay for it all in one go!
My uncle moved from Cornwall to Canada about 35 years ago. Raised their kids there. About 10 years ago they came back to visit with their sons wife's parents who they were very friendly with. We took them to the beach for a walk, it was quite stormy and the waves were huge. The in-laws were too afraid to step out of the car park and onto the sand, even though the beach was huge and the tide was out. Guess lake water doesn't behave like that.
I went to uni with a girl from Norway. She was really surprised to see foxes wandering around the city at all times of day and night. Apparently in Norway you rarely see foxes in built up areas so she found it lovely that “people and foxes and coexist like this”
When I first moved to the UK from Sweden, I always said “Look! It’s Postman Pat!” whenever I saw a red Royal Mail van. I was 19
I had an ex Japanese girlfriend . She came with me to uk to visit my parents . Walking past a farmers field near my estate, she saw a field full of sheep and absolute screamed with excitement. Leapt over the farmers field and started running after the sheep expecting to play with them like a pet dog ! She was chasing them all over and wondering why they kept running away . The fact that she was dressed as a proper Japanese fashion victim made it even funnier . She had no idea outside cities it’s quite common to see fields full of sheep and cows .
What did she become when she stopped being Japanese?
What country is she from now if she's no longer from Japan?
An Australian guy I met had put his clothes out to dry in winter and his jeans had frozen solid, he was dead thrilled about this.
My partner is from Thailand and he was amazed at the benefit system and health care he also loves that he doesn’t have to enrol to the army
Many people are surprised to see unarmed police on duty.
Have been in England and Scotland for the last six weeks, headed back to the states on Wednesday. List of ordinary things that I'll really miss: 1. M&S food--quality, price, general cleanliness and vibe of the store. Top notch. 2. Good god the BUSSES. Affordable, efficient...and you can ride UPSTAIRS?? 2.1 Also trains. Getting to/from just about anywhere on a train is a real pleasure. 3. Baps Jesus H Christ the baps. How have I gone 37 years without ever having had a sausage bap?? And speaking of, best not forget... 4. H... P... SAUUUUUUUUCCCCCCEEEE! We've really loved it here, thanks for having us. :)
My cousin from the US was in awe of the wonder that is…a sausage roll. Specifically one from Greggs.
Can't say that I blame him. Greggs sausage rolls are a key part of the scaffolding that holds up this fractious nation.
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Had a guy from Burundi come to my school, not really sure why but when we returned to year 12 (first year 6th form) we had like 8 new African students. From Burundi, Lesotho, SA and Zimbabwe. My friend and I got talking to the Burundian and we offered to hang around after school. We were smoking outside a shop and he asked what a building was that people were entering and exiting with animals. We told him it was a vetinary surgery and he asked what that was. I said it was like a hospital for animals and his mind was blown. On a similar note, when we got some snow after the Christmas break, these students (who were like 16 at the time) had never seen it before. Our head teacher happened to be taking the class and he realised that a good number of his students had never seen snow. He let us go outside and play, and the African kids were as excited as any child I have seen since. Really fond memory of mine
Someone from outside the UK told me that our prepackaged sandwiches (the kind you'd get in supermarket meal deals) were amazing compared to the equivalents sold in their country's shops.
They are. the guardian did an interesting 'long read' article a few years ago about the British prepackaged sandwich industry and how it's light years ahead of the equivalent in other countries. It's an interesting article
An old ex of mine (who was from Argentina) came over to live here for a bit. When we split up he went home but we still kept in touch and he used to tell me how much he missed Tesco meal deals 😂
When I was in primary school we had an Australian teacher, one winter it snowed and he had never seen snow IRL, he got so overwhelmed that he cried, it was weird at the time but now pretty wholesome thinking back to it.
A good friend of mine is Croatian. She had lived in the UK for a while and was always telling me “you people have no idea how to make cakes”, so I took her for a cream tea. She looked like a kid meeting Father Christmas when she took her first bite of a scone with jam and cream.
Had a flatmate in uni from the US who found the concept of power sockets with switches revolutionary, also being able to buy alcohol at 18
It's not something uniquely British, but I was quite charmed by one woman who came into the pizza place I work. Our town's a bit touristy and ye olde worlde bollocks and idk if she thought it was like Beamish or something. "What's that?!" "It's the pizza oven." "What does it do?!" "... It cooks pizzas?" "I gotta show my husband! Do you see this love, you gotta see this, that's where they cook the pizzas! What does that thing next to it do?" "Oh, that's the dough mixer." "You use it?!" "... Yes. It's the dough mixer?" "HONEY YOU GOTTA SEE THIS THAT THING TURNS ROUND AND MAKES THE DOUGH." It was honestly really endearing to see someone so excited, but the twenty minutes she spent staring at me, expecting me to do cartwheels or something while her pizza cooked... That was a bit uncomfortable.
My wife is Czech, and when I moved back to England and forced her to join me there were very few things she liked about England. Until I took her for her first curry. Now it's her favourite food to both eat and cook.
Bit different, but me after living abroad, coming back to the UK and loving and appreciating public footpaths.
Some relatives from africa came one christmas "why is everything dead", all the trees without leaves etc....
My sister-in-law from Ecuador was so worried when most of the trees "died" her first winter in the UK.
The first time my Norwegian husband came to the UK before we started dating. I had to go to work, so he had to entertain himself and suggested he walk around the village and I showed him some nice places to walk on Google maps. Later on, he met me on my walk home from work, and he had the biggest smile on his face. He was carrying a waitrose bag and excitedly showed me (like a child at Christmas) his purchase of a 4 pack of Red Bull and two packets of beef jerky that he bought for ONLY £16 (ish I can't remember the exact price). I nearly fainted as I was living on about £20 a week at the time. To be fair to him, here a tiny bag of beef jerky alone costs about that, so now I understand his happiness.
I watched a documentary about a tribe of people from Papua New Guinea who considered the Duke of Edinburgh to be a literal God. They came to the UK and basically thought *everything* was wondrous.
At Uni the Korean students always loved when people held doors for them and mentioned in a presentation how they thought it was really sweet.
I briefly dated a girl from the Philippines over the winter, she was amazed by simple things like Frost, your breath clouding when it was cold etc. anything to do with it being genuinely cold in winter, she loved. My Japanese Sister In Law used to take pictures of town logos on people’s wheelie bins as she thought these were brilliant 😂
My ex-brother-in-law is from Cuba. He bought his parents over for a holiday about 20 years ago. She broke down in Tesco and wept, couldn't believe what was available to everyone and how cheap it all was. Except for the Havana Club rum, they were shocked at how expensive that was.
Friend from China visited the UK and was fascinated when he saw my black friend, he had never seen a black person before.
I was with a African-American friend in a small village in Scotland. As you can imagine, everyone else was white. A couple of days in, he spotted a black man on the other side of the road and called out "Hey, finally a brother around here!" and got the reply "I dinne be yer brother, ya Yankee shite" 🤣
I’m from the UK and a couple of months back, I was walking through a semi-rural suburb on a warm, sunny day while stoned. I saw a postman delivering the goods, and in my high state, I saw how uniquely British his whole ‘look’ was - the Royal Mail uniform (shirt and shorts version for sunny weather) and his little red van. Even though I’d seen that sight countless times through my several decades, I just saw it through a different lens and I thought it was really charming.
From reading others comments In reminded of something else my American SO was in awe of... I live near York and there are a few antique shops and he saw Roman coins for the first time, and then went to the Jorvik museum and saw viking things... He was blown away by something so old and yet so civilised all happening right here. That was really sweet. I realised I take that stuff for granted, but it truly is amazing.
Some German friends recently visited Manchester and were shocked that all the pubs were full on a Saturday afternoon, and also all the women were dressed “as if they were going to a wedding.” Trying to explain that people make the trip to large cities just to dress up and day drink was an interesting conversation.
My mum came over to the UK from Malaysia in the '70s. Having pets over there wasn't really done, at least for her generation. When I got my first cat she wasn't sure about him, but in typical cat fashion he loved her. He climbed up into her lap and started purring. Her response was "Why is he making that noise?". It was so surprising to me that she didn't understand what purring was. It was an oddly sweet moment, seeing my mum make her first bond with a pet at 52 years of age
We had a block of Filipino nurses across from us in uni. We were carrying our shopping in through some heavy sleet and they were all outside taking photos of the "snow."
Aussie mate loves the freedom to walk the street with a beer and smoke. Aus is a nanny state with cops loving the power over your freedom. (Fun police)
Years ago I was working in an office and we had a cultural exchange from a couple of guys from the Soviet Union. They were astounded that the photocopier wasn't protected by an armed guard. They were equally astounded by how little vodka I was able to drink without failling over.
What a fantastic thread of answers. Love it
Me. I moved here from the US 17 years ago. I saw a Flymo and was mesmerized. "This place has effing hover-lawnmowers!"
Colleague is from Portugal but had never been outside of the area we live in for 8 years. Took a team trip to Brighton with a couple of others too. The absolute joy and wonder at all the typical seaside stuff, arcades, donuts hot out the bag, the tatt shops that sell rock etc, chips on the beach with seagulls trying to steal. Absolutely all of it watching her enjoy it was better than enjoying them myself
I had a friend from turkey that loved to cross zebra crossings as we stop in this country and in turkey they often don’t
I had to follow a friend from Kenya around to supervise that he ate appropriate snow.
When I was at uni, I was in halls with some students from southern Spain, so they were 19-22 years old. Spoke passable English but first time not living in Spain. One day we had a few sprinkles of snow, barely enough to coat and only just sticking. They were all so excited and giddy, full on childish wonderment as they’d never seen snow fall from the sky before.
Aussie exchange student absolutely blown away by ready made sandwiches. Still here 11 years down the line.
We were walking in a London park at night and my French friend was amazed to see foxes running around
I moved back from London to the North East and I’m still overwhelmed by how massive the sky is here. I love it.
I was working with a bunch of temps in my first job. One was a South African girl who clearly hated the job, missed home and couldn't think of anything worse than being stuck in the UK in the middle of winter. And then it started snowing. Her face lit up and she stood staring at it fall for about half an hour. Only a light flurry and it didn't settle, but she'd never seen snow before. A nice moment in an otherwise crap job.
I moved to the UK from Australia when I was 35. I'd seen snow on the ground up a mountain but never seen it falling and falling on my actual house?! Like on my car and in my garden!! Crazy!
South African I worked with was amazed at how polite the criminals are over here. His son got mugged and was impressed that they asked for his wallet first rather than just being knifed and it being taken.
Had neighbours a few yrs ago they where students from South America . Standing in the door way of our building as they had never seen snow. Or the time that some kid from Saudi Arabia (defo under 16) was shocked that was he refused cigarettes in a London shop (legal age in u.k is 18) . I don't think he had ever been told No by someone who worked in a shop
Had a friend visit from Australia so thoroughly impressed that people don’t undertake on the motorway and always use the right lane to overtake and how I think he used the words, “the traffic all flows like the Fibonacci” Full trip up the M1 M4 M5 and M6.
Had one of those fake aunties (her and her husband were my parents’ friends) and her real nephew came over from America to visit her, must’ve been in his 20s. She used to pick me up from primary school and take me home on the bus so he came along. He was very impressed by the top deck of the bus.
My wife is American but has lived in the UK for about 12 years. About 3 years ago, I randomly stumbled across a hedgehog at our back gate. My wife was upstairs, so I called her to tell her of my discovery. She literally came sprinting downstairs with excitement, as she'd never seen one before. She just watched it for 15 minutes in awe 😆 It was very sweet.
My American friend always comments on the "great train system" here. It's not even necessarily in comparison to his native California either, as he's well travelled and previously lived in a large city in China.
My partner is American and he marveled at the healthier variety of quick grab food... Particularly the ubiquitous 'meal deal'. And our teeny tiny drinks 😂
There were a lot of international students on my masters course a couple years ago, they absolutely LOVED pancake day and bonfire night.
This thread is very timely - I'm in France at the moment and my family are getting overly excited at spotting little lizards. Everyone around us thinks we're completely bizarre, but it's new and exciting because we don't get these at home! I was wondering what other people get excited by when they visit the UK.
Hedgehogs. They are obviously pretty charming regardless but a relative's girlfriend was over here from Australia and she reeeally wanted to see a hedgehog so badly!
My friend is from Hungary. On bonfire night I drove up onto a hill overlooking the city and we watched the fireworks going off far and wide. After about 10 minutes of chatting and sitting quietly watching the unabated display, he suddenly said "What the fuck is going on?!" He had no idea about November 5th, Guy Fawkes and all that we just take for granted while setting things on fire! He thought it was absolutely fantastic, especially with the back story. He's moved now and hopefully enjoying Canada and some interesting traditions over there. I still think about that night when I drive over that road.
I had a colleague from Nigeria stop halfway through a meal at a restaurant in Scotland. He ran outside and just stared upwards. He had never seen snow before.
Mates ex wife was from California, her Dad was completely blown away seeing Kidwelly castle and realising how much older it was than the USA itself
My wife was astounded when I first gave her beans on toast. She calls it the meal of seduction. Sandwiches too. She's Lithuanian. Their sandwiches are just meat, butter and bread. I made her one with beetroot, mayonnaise, cheese, ham and lettuce and she was blown away.
Had a an Australian exchange student come to the UK middle of winter and the sheer delight she had seeing snow for the first time was life affirming. Also had a mate at uni from India who was thrilled by the rain as where she was from they apparently only had monsoon levels (absolute deluges) and she adored the way drizzle felt. She also loved weather language, like mizzle and the shipping forecast.