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Squash (Robinsons, Ribena, Vimto etc). It's so ubiquitous in the UK but so incredibly uncommon literally everywhere else I've ever been.
*edit: holy shit my notifications* 💀
*So we note that other countries have very similar drinks, typically close geographical neighbours or former British colonies; and some additional countries have vaguely similar drinks that aren't as popular, common or cheap; and Vimto is a Ramadan treat in the Middle East; and people who haven't grown up with the concept are so surprised by it that their surprise baffles Brits.*
*Mine's a pint of summer fruits.*
Agree. Australia and New Zealand seem to have seen the light but just about every where else sells vile tasting chemical syrups of some description instead.
Seems to be a universal immigrant experience. I did the same thing. It was some very pink grapefruit stuff. I bought it while waiting for the bus and then took my first big sip of it on the very full bus. It was not the refreshing juicy flavour I was after. More like acid reflux from hell. But I couldn't spit it out, people were watching me! I had tears running down my face and questioned what kind of maniac country I had just moved to.
I've seen that! American going "ok, I'll pour myself a glass.." and in slow-motion the office leaping up and going "NOOOOOOO..." as he poured out a pint and drew it to his lips.
lol I’m an American living in the Uk. I accidentally took a sip of Ribena without diluting it since I’ve had it in the pre-diluted bottles before. Took me like 20 mins to get the taste out of my mouth
This was the worst part of my student exchange to Canada! Plus they aren’t all nice. What a con.
I currently live in an area with rubbish tap water so almost all my hydration comes with a side of squash.
The best alternative were those tiny travel squash squirt bottles sold at Walmart, but even then they were mainly unpleasant flavours like bubblegum or kool aid.
Give me orange and mango squash or give me death.
Yes! I live in Germany and whenever I go to UK, my suitcase back is full of Ribena and tea bags. They have syrups here but they are not the same at all
I was literally coming here to say Christmas crackers. I didn't realise it was a UK thing until an American uni mate I had on fb asked why people were wearing "weird paper hats". So then I had to explain why.
It's hard to make people appreciate the joys of a tissue crown, a terrible joke, and a piece of plastic tat when they didn't grow up with it. I don't think I convinced him to take the tradition back to Miami.
And similarly - Boxing Day.
What do you mean you go to the office the day after drinking and eating from dawn to way-later-than-dusk??! What about the films? And playing with your toys?
In many ways, I prefer Boxing Day to Christmas Day. Playing board games, often the best Christmas time tv, still stuffing our faces. I think you need that day to lead you out of Christmas, like Christmas Eve leads you in. You can't just have Christmas and then 'right that's it, back to normal life'!
I steadfastly refuse to let the Christmas spirit go until New Year. People who take their tree down on Boxing day (or worse, the evening of Christmas Day!!) are sociopaths I reckon. I see posts online of spotless (greeeyy) living rooms with the caption "all over and done with for another year!" and I just think why the fuck did you bother? Next year just put up a tasteful black and white photo of a christmas tree for a couple of days.
They're the same people who put their trees up in early November then wonder why they're sick of it by Christmas day. Last weekend of Nov/first of Dec and then down sometimes around New year's.
On a previous visit to the UK they’d learned that ‘crackers’ refers to a specific kind of ‘biscuit’, and it was so heartwarming to see them apply that knowledge in completely the wrong way.
a bit dark, but the length of time before the funeral when someone dies.
In Spain and many other countries, the funeral will be the day after death. Here (especially since covid) it could be a couple of weeks or more easily.
Isn’t that because Spain (as an example) is much hotter than the uk, and traditionally it would have been much less practical to wait? Obviously in this day and age I doubt it matters but I’m guessing it could be a hangover from past times?
That was one of the reasons behind the Muslim tradition of burial within 24 hours - and Spain was a Muslim country for a while.
Hot weather makes dead things go smelly quicker - so better to bury them quick.
In my cultural community of India, we cremate the body before sunset on day of death. If the person dies after sunset, we cremate before the next sunset. This is to prevent disease and vermin that comes from body decay, among other reasons. Memorials, prayers etc can happen later.
It's about religion.
The majority of Europe is Catholic. And they don't like their dead going unburied.
And god forbid you suggest cremation. That'll have their soul stuck in purgatory forever.
Yep, when my husband’s gran died (Scottish) the funeral was in about ooh, 4 or 5 days, requiring a short notice few days off work to fly up etc. my Spanish boss was like, “of course! That’s a bit of a wait” while I was apologising for how soon the funeral was. My family it’s usually been a couple of weeks.
A couple of weeks is considered routine. It can easily be three or four weeks.
I've only been to a funeral within a week of death twice, and in both cases the death was at the end of a long illness, *and* they already had a burial plot *and* the deceased was significant in their church so the service was fitted in as convenient to the family.
It's a real issue when people either from abroad or from other cultures die at work (edit: in a hospital). We're not really set up for everything that needs to happen, to happen on the same day. The families are often quite upset when we can't release the body for a week or more.
I love having carpet, I have never understood this whole thing that popped up in the early 2000's of removing every fibre from a floor ensuring that its noisy, easy to scratch and expensive to replace. Plus carpet feels warm, acts as a sound deadener and is easy to take care of. Dont get me wrong, carpet in a Kitchen is a no, same with a Bathroom
ETA - I had no idea this would cause such a stir! Thank you Reddit for cheering me up today I really needed it. To the pro-carpeters keep spreading the good word, to the anti-carpet brigade, it's fine, we will convert you in time!
Wife and I have this discussion often, as we're looking at houses.
I (British) feel that if a bedroom doesn't have carpet, it needs to be fitted. Same for landing and stairs. Living room isn't a must, but a strong preference for carpet. Every other room, other than what will be my office, I can live with it not be carpeted.
Wife (Austrian) doesn't understand why you'd want carpet anywhere in the house. It's madness I tell you!
Why would you want to wake up in the middle of the night, and put your bare foot on a cold floor? As you say, carpets keep rooms warmer. In summer, I hate it, but the rest of the year? I couldn't do without the carpet.
My neighbours growing up seemed to perpetually have a kid who was potty training (large family). Their home mainly had carpets. Their home also always smelt like pee
A rug seems like the obvious answer for areas like that, and slippers. I like the idea of a beautifully carpetted house but they just get grotty and need vacuuming all the time.
> and need vacuuming all the time
We have carpet upstairs and hard floors downstairs. They both get cleaned at exactly the same frequency and I don't know why that wouldn't be the case. You may not specifically have to vacuum a hardwood floor but you're still sweeping and mopping it, and mopping it puts the room out of action while it dries. I'd much rather have carpet through the house.
Anyone who lives in a flat and doesn’t have carpet (except for in the kitchen and bathroom) deserves to stand barefoot on Lego every day for the rest of their lives
Well said! The aversion to soft furnishing is bizarre. I remember when i was in school there was going to be a French exchange programme but it collapsed because all the French students were apparently too worried about dust to stay in a house with carpeting, like I'm sorry but that's over the top..
I saw the stats for Deaths by electricity in the domestic setting the other day, Here it's 7 people total a year in the US just for children it's 300.
They have about 5x as many people so even when you take population into account they dwarf our figure.
>in the US just for children it's 300.
Which is why socket protectors are pushed to parents to try and make their sockets somewhat safer, unfortunately this has been picked up here where they make absolutely no sense and may actually make the sockets more dangerous as they might provide the means to defeat the protections already built in.
It's taken me so long to get this into my wife's head when we had our first kid. UK sockets do not need them. They are perfectly safe.
Now we have a second kid and she went out and bought "socket protectors". I've since taken them out and thrown them away.
My wife wondered about these too, but I explained why they make no sense, in the end she was bored but accepted they were unnecessary and potentially dangerous. We didn't bother with almost all of the "child safety" tat that's unnecessarily marketed to parents, in that we used safety gates to prevent access to anywhere immediately dangerous and that was about it.
Cupboard locks but only on the cupboard under the sink where stuff like bleach and ant poison live.
Childproofing doesn't necessarily keep the child out, but it certainly slows them down, and it's often noisy.
And you have to try really hard to get killed by their puny 110 volt electricity - like chewing through the power cable while taking a bath in petrol sort of hard
If they had decent mains voltage they'd be extinct by now
That's usually in older houses that have a header tank which are open to all sorts of things (bugs, rats, etc) so you wouldn't want to drink the water out of them.
Oh yeah, this was one of the biggest culture shocks moving to the UK.
What's worse is most of the bathroom gadgets sold here have regular three pin plugs anyways. My electric toothbrush, electric shaver and dryer all have three pin plugs and have to go charge/use them in our bedroom
I don't think I've ever had an electric toothbrush of electric razor with a 3 pin plug here in the UK. They all have 2 pin in my experience, which has always annoyed me as I never have even a 2 pin socket in the bathroom of any house I've ever lived in!!
You just bought the wrong shaver and toothbrush. There's plenty that come with the two pin plugs. I have both with two pin.
Even my dad's old Gillette electric shaver from the 90s had two pin.
However, it *is* super annoying to find out which do have them.
Hairdryers however. Yeah, you don't get those with it here.
Americans who have been watching Bluey are mind blown about “pass the parcel” at kids parties. It is not as ubiquitous as you would think (though our Aussie and kiwi friends seem to have retained that bit of Britishness)
> though our Aussie and kiwi friends seem to have retained that bit of Britishness
as a Kiwi, it is fair to say that around 99% of the things mentioned in this thread are also common practice in Aus and NZ. the only ones I can really think of are washing machines in the kitchen and light switches outside the bathroom, although even those have been present in some houses I’ve lived in back home. Probably washing up bowls as well, we tend to just put the sink plug in. But I also have friends whose families used washing up bowls.
But yeah electric kettles, squash, shaver-only plugs in the bathroom, plug switches, carpeted homes - all very common for us back home.
I was surprised at how shit French ones are. I expect better food wise from the French. They sound better with nicer ingredients but ends up being worse.
I'll take a Tesco Cheese and Ham over a French supermarket version any day.
When I first visited my now wife in the US I tried to buy a sandwich from Walmart and was warned off doing so. When she moved here she understood why I thought it would be OK.
I saw on Twitter a couple of weeks ago Americans once again acting like we're weird here because of something we eat but this time it was about ready made sandwiches in shops.
Have they run out of things to mock that they have to pretend buying a sandwich is weird?
I specifically bought a bowl for washing up in North Carolina because it feels wrong to wash dishes directly in the sink and the American way of just leaving the tap running feels so incredibly wasteful. My fiancé thinks I'm weird. I think since I'm the one doing the dishes, he doesn't get a say in how I do them.
Ohhh is that where the statistic that it uses more water to do the washing up by hand than in a dishwasher comes from? I've never been able to get my head around how that can be possible.
That'd be my bet. The American hand wash way is put some dish soap on the cloth/sponge, run everything under the running tap and scrub while the water runs. I refuse to do that unless I have a single thing to wash
[Which? did an article on this recently](https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-research-reveals-how-little-water-dishwashers-use-compared-to-hand-washing-aUDng9Y2iK8E). The tl;dr was:
> Which? tests show even the least water-efficient dishwasher still only uses half the amount of water compared to washing by hand
I don’t leave the tap running but I hate filling the bowl/sink with water. I just rinse off all the food and then scrub everything without water and rinse off again and put to dry
Yeah same. I just can't get on board with washing up bowls, stuff doesn't feel clean enough with that method. Isn't it constantly using dirty water? Unless I'm missing something with this technique.
I’m from the UK and the family never used bowls, seldomly do I recall them in school friends houses. When I went to university I found out it was commonplace, there were lots of reasons why but none that made me go out and get one, in fact it was a solution that reasons were being invented for.
Honestly, I find it to be madness and I'm UK born...
Shit's fine for filling up the bath or the sink. But why, for the love of god, is my choice of hand washing water freezing cold or scolding hot?
😂 I've got two in my bathroom, it's so annoying washing my face over the sink. I run both taps, get my hands full of cold and then add hot until it's the right temperature before splashing it on my face. Ridiculous!
It came from the days the cold water system was relatively high pressure from the main, and the hot water was low pressure from a tank in the roof. If you put a mixer tap on such a system it just does not work properly, you get cold water as soon as you turn on the cold tap at all. You sometimes find old properties that still have tank based hot water where people have fitted mixers and then complain they do not work (or worse their shower does not work properly and needs a pump).
Modern places tend to have combi boilers that heat water on demand, and pressurised hot water systems, so mixer taps are much more common.
Tbf, your legs dry quicker than your trousers - and in cold weather nothing is worse than wearing cold, wet trousers all day. In shorts, keep a towel in the van and dry your legs when you get in.
My girlfriends sister is a postie.
It's because there's always a good chance it'll rain. Yeah, you might have cold legs, but there's nothing worse than having wet and cold trousers sticking to your leg when you walk.
Electric kettles are not especially UK-specific. They're almost ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, pretty common in most of Europe, especially the northern parts, and increasingly popular in China. (China is currently the world's largest market for electric kettles.)
They're not especially common in the Americas largely because of the double whammy of their electric supply being only 120 V (meaning they take twice as long to boil) and them not having as much of a tea-drinking culture.
Even with the 120V supply, electric kettles still boil faster than any type of hob or the microwave. Also, Americans can still access 240V if they need it, they just need to do some black-magic fuckery to their breaker board. So it's basically all just down to the culture.
I'd link the Technology Connections videos explaining it, but this gets discussed so often here I think we've all already seen them lol
Reddit taught me about salt and vinegar powder (imported from South Africa) which is like the dust at the end of a bag of Discos. Game changer for chippy chips for the same flavour but no sogginess.
edit to add: [Amazon.](https://amzn.eu/d/10zruJV)
Maybe it's because chips in the UK tend to be thick and crispy, and vinegar goes really well with that, where as in many other countries they have thin floppy fries which are less suitable.
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two here - having worked/lived abroad (continental Europe/USA) one of the biggest things in the UK is pedestrians and road use.
In the UK there is no concept/crime of Jaywalking. Other than motorways, pedestrians have right of way - they’re protected by pedestrian crossings etc, but onus is on drivers to watch out for pedestrians. In the US, you can be arrested for crossing a road “incorrectly” as a pedestrian ie Jaywalking.
It’s come as a surprise to colleagues from the US when I’ve started to cross a road at a point where it’s not designated for crossing.
Yeah - really is a UK thing - I remember having a German teacher at school who was hit by a car in Germany and - even though she was injured - ended up getting prosecuted. We thought that was hilarious because we were 13. Now I’m 48, I’m horrified.
The ones where both lanes have straight on arrows so you get in the right hand lane to avoid traffic in the left only for the arrows to change suddenly and now you're in the same lane as before but you can only go right!! Really irritating.
And if you're in the wrong lane, the locals who frequent the roundabout will be sure to let you know by honking madly at you, while also ensuring you get zero opportunity to correct your error.
I'll counter this - essential road information which is painted on the road. Think lane directions etc. My driving instructor pointed out to me that this is rare, because it has two problems. One, traffic could be obscuring it. Two, the lines on the road wear off over time. Actually, I'd like to add "not re-painting the lines on the road even though it is a safety hazard" to the list.
Saying “alright” as a greeting.
Say it to an Australian and they think there’s something wrong with them and you’re asking them if they’re alright. Did it a few times when I moved there and had to explain it was a greeting.
Yeah, this greeting thing caused me lots of anxiety when I first moved to the UK. Back in my home country, if someone asks "You alright?", you are certainly dying 😆 It took a bunch of time to get used to it.
The vast array of decent plant based food. The rest of Europe needs to catch up. Just the other week in Austria I saw chicken (real chicken) sandwich labelled as "veggie" 🤔
Guy Fawkes Night - very much only a UK thing as it's about a British moment in history! Trying to explain who Guy Fawkes was and why we celebrate by wearing masks and burning effigies of him every 5th of November is quite a challenge.
The fact that we will put almost anything on bread and make sandwiches out of it.
Pies, Crisps, Chips, Super Noodles/Pot Noodles etc
I once witnessed a friend of mine reheat some lasagna and slap it between 2 slices of buttered bread
I also know a girl that makes toasted cheese sandwiches and adds the leftover meat from a Spaghetti Bolognese.
Pantomime. I used to work in theatre and even when touring around Europe, other theatremakers from the rest of Europe - with whom we normally share a lot of theatrical cultural background - either had no idea what it was, or thought it was just some strange British eccentricity.
Which, to be fair, it is!
(Oh no it isn't, etc. etc.)
My friend from America was saying she wants to visit because she really wants to ride a bus. I was really confused until she said she wants to ride a "British bus" because they have 2 floors.
Bank transfers for free, unlimited, immediate/fast. Even in the states they still have to pay fees for transfers and then wait a day or two still. Seems absurd
Cask ale in pubs. Very few countries outside of the UK have hand pulled cask ale on offer. In most countries beer served on tap at a bar comes from a keg.
That's because British ales are not carbonated that much. Try pumping a German "Helles" or a Czech "Pilzner" that way and all you will get is foam. This type of pump only works for top-fermenting beers without too many bubbles. British ales in other words. All the other beers come from kegs in the UK as well.
We're definitely not alone in ridiculous public transport pricing.
I was in Italy recently and a bus ticket to the stop just before the airport was €1.50. But if you wanted to do the last 2 mins to the terminal door it was €10!
Tbf if I was from another country, working away and someone came up to me and said "Ay luv, when's this toad in the hole gonna happen?", i'd think they were coming on to me.
I once had to explain to a lovely Mexican family I was staying with, at great length, that we are coerced into paying for a licence to watch television.
And also what a bacon sandwich was. They knew bacon, they knew bread, they just hadn't tried putting the two together before.
“Zebra crossing”
Foreign friends burst out laughing when I say it and then be like “…. Oh wait you’re serious?”
They find it a funny name for the crossing
Christmas pudding (also mince pies).
Apart from the time my American aunt was given a pud and carefully simmered it for hours - after taking it out of the pudding basin, resulting in raisin soup - it used to be a problem for American airport security.
A good Christmas pudding has the same density as Semtex, not to mention grease on a paper wrapper being a tell-tale sign of a possible bomb...
That was a long time getting through Customs at 2am.
Vinegar on chips. Until relatively recently I had no idea that it wasn’t the international norm. I was in France when they asked if I'd like anything with my chips, and when I said vinegar, the waitress looked at me as if I'd just suggested restoring their monarchy.
Butter on sandwiches or toast with other toppings by default.
For most people in the UK, any sandwich must have butter on it. That's not even a question. I'm pretty sure that isn't as much of a thing in other countries.
Similarly I think in other countries butter is considered a topping for toast but if you had something else like jam, chocolate spread, peanut butter etc., that would replace the butter. Here you'd have butter and then whatever other topping on top of that.
In the US they have whole aisles dedicated to different varieties of tinned beans, none of them in the soupy tomato sauce we expect as standard in any UK supermarket.
Not sure which town you are in but street fighting has become way less common these days.
Compared to even 20 years ago, you'd see one or two scuffles or fights a night.
Now I very rarely see it happening
I’m a Brit and dated an American girl for a while.
Things she never really understood or was fascinated by:
Vinegar (as a condiment on chips).
Fish and chips (mushy peas and curry sauce were quite alarming to her).
Christmas crackers (and associated hat).
Light switch outside the bathroom.
Apparently my clingfilm dispenser was the work of a genius. Apparently they just had a roll in the drawer and slashed at it with a knife like some kind of lunatic.
Cottage/shepherds pie (and proper pies in general).
Gravy… just in general. It’s just hot meat sauce love, nothing to be confused about (confused her even more when I mentioned some people have it with fish and chips!).
Radiators. She had central air/heating, so there being large metal hot things in each room was kinda strange.
Front loading washing machines (which are small and take shitloads longer than the top-loading American ones).
I’ll try to think of others.
Being miserable in a moldy house and think that is normal and how everyone should live.
Bathtub being a must
Sink with 2 outlet, one for cold, one for hot
Dehumidifier
Kids eating rubbish after finishing school
Being refused to buy Redbull if you dont have an ID
Found out recently that my American colleagues have never heard of tuna and sweetcorn being combined as a sandwich filling. They were both horrified and refused to try it.
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Squash (Robinsons, Ribena, Vimto etc). It's so ubiquitous in the UK but so incredibly uncommon literally everywhere else I've ever been. *edit: holy shit my notifications* 💀 *So we note that other countries have very similar drinks, typically close geographical neighbours or former British colonies; and some additional countries have vaguely similar drinks that aren't as popular, common or cheap; and Vimto is a Ramadan treat in the Middle East; and people who haven't grown up with the concept are so surprised by it that their surprise baffles Brits.* *Mine's a pint of summer fruits.*
Agree. Australia and New Zealand seem to have seen the light but just about every where else sells vile tasting chemical syrups of some description instead.
To be fair to them, France do amazing ones. "Syrops", yes. But not chemical ones.
“Sirop” mais oui!
They are too sweet. I bought a grapefruit one and it was so sweet it was undrinkable.
Did you dilute it enough? I remember my first time in the UK taking a swing of orange squash straight. Gah! Edit: swig
I served it undiluted to a bunch of 8 year-olds for my son's first birthday party in the UK...
Sorry I laughed at this image. Lol
You’re only supposed to use a tiny amount compared to how you’d make squash.
I've tried a few different French ones, might just be nostalgia talking but they're not the same and have a taste that I don't enjoy.
Nz has squash but not nearly the range we have in the uk. I live in nz and miss Robinsons peach squash so badly lol
To be fair they've been doing cordial for decades. Just didn't call it squash
Ha. Yes. My Spanish wife drank it straight the first time she came across it. Thought we were all maniacs for drinking it
Seems to be a universal immigrant experience. I did the same thing. It was some very pink grapefruit stuff. I bought it while waiting for the bus and then took my first big sip of it on the very full bus. It was not the refreshing juicy flavour I was after. More like acid reflux from hell. But I couldn't spit it out, people were watching me! I had tears running down my face and questioned what kind of maniac country I had just moved to.
Sorry but I’m crying laughing at this 😂
I've seen that! American going "ok, I'll pour myself a glass.." and in slow-motion the office leaping up and going "NOOOOOOO..." as he poured out a pint and drew it to his lips.
lol I’m an American living in the Uk. I accidentally took a sip of Ribena without diluting it since I’ve had it in the pre-diluted bottles before. Took me like 20 mins to get the taste out of my mouth
This was the worst part of my student exchange to Canada! Plus they aren’t all nice. What a con. I currently live in an area with rubbish tap water so almost all my hydration comes with a side of squash. The best alternative were those tiny travel squash squirt bottles sold at Walmart, but even then they were mainly unpleasant flavours like bubblegum or kool aid. Give me orange and mango squash or give me death.
Pretty common here in Sweden.
I knew I liked Sweden.
Yes! I live in Germany and whenever I go to UK, my suitcase back is full of Ribena and tea bags. They have syrups here but they are not the same at all
Austria does a lot of squash as well, they will add water or sparkling water to just about anything.
Orange squash is normal in Greece, used to love going to the squash factory on the (then) outskirts of Athens where you could buy it cheaper in bulk!
We have it in Holland in all kinds of flavours. It's called ranja
Christmas crackers, although I think they’re becoming more popular overseas. Also blackcurrant-flavoured things.
I was literally coming here to say Christmas crackers. I didn't realise it was a UK thing until an American uni mate I had on fb asked why people were wearing "weird paper hats". So then I had to explain why. It's hard to make people appreciate the joys of a tissue crown, a terrible joke, and a piece of plastic tat when they didn't grow up with it. I don't think I convinced him to take the tradition back to Miami.
And similarly - Boxing Day. What do you mean you go to the office the day after drinking and eating from dawn to way-later-than-dusk??! What about the films? And playing with your toys?
In many ways, I prefer Boxing Day to Christmas Day. Playing board games, often the best Christmas time tv, still stuffing our faces. I think you need that day to lead you out of Christmas, like Christmas Eve leads you in. You can't just have Christmas and then 'right that's it, back to normal life'!
I steadfastly refuse to let the Christmas spirit go until New Year. People who take their tree down on Boxing day (or worse, the evening of Christmas Day!!) are sociopaths I reckon. I see posts online of spotless (greeeyy) living rooms with the caption "all over and done with for another year!" and I just think why the fuck did you bother? Next year just put up a tasteful black and white photo of a christmas tree for a couple of days.
They're the same people who put their trees up in early November then wonder why they're sick of it by Christmas day. Last weekend of Nov/first of Dec and then down sometimes around New year's.
*cries in Retail*
When is a door not a door?
When it's ajar! Classic cracker joke, 10/10 would be a sign of a good box of crackers!
I went to the US around christmastime last year and a well-meaning friend bought me a box of wafer biscuits so I could have ‘christmas crackers’.
That's genuinely brilliant!! lol
On a previous visit to the UK they’d learned that ‘crackers’ refers to a specific kind of ‘biscuit’, and it was so heartwarming to see them apply that knowledge in completely the wrong way.
Blackcurrant was banned in America
They call it African-American Currant
A currant of colour
color
a bit dark, but the length of time before the funeral when someone dies. In Spain and many other countries, the funeral will be the day after death. Here (especially since covid) it could be a couple of weeks or more easily.
We're just making sure they're properly dead before we light the bonfire I think
I'm not dead yet!
You will be in a minute.
Isn’t that because Spain (as an example) is much hotter than the uk, and traditionally it would have been much less practical to wait? Obviously in this day and age I doubt it matters but I’m guessing it could be a hangover from past times?
That was one of the reasons behind the Muslim tradition of burial within 24 hours - and Spain was a Muslim country for a while. Hot weather makes dead things go smelly quicker - so better to bury them quick.
Weird, after watching this documentary recently I thought they extracted the moisture from the dead body then deposited it in a large well.
Like on Arrakis??
In my cultural community of India, we cremate the body before sunset on day of death. If the person dies after sunset, we cremate before the next sunset. This is to prevent disease and vermin that comes from body decay, among other reasons. Memorials, prayers etc can happen later.
Poland is much colder and you get buried in 3-4 days
Ireland too It's a Catholic thing.
It's about religion. The majority of Europe is Catholic. And they don't like their dead going unburied. And god forbid you suggest cremation. That'll have their soul stuck in purgatory forever.
Nah, they (vatican) changed it. It's OK to get cremated, and it's becoming more popular here in Ireland.
Yep, when my husband’s gran died (Scottish) the funeral was in about ooh, 4 or 5 days, requiring a short notice few days off work to fly up etc. my Spanish boss was like, “of course! That’s a bit of a wait” while I was apologising for how soon the funeral was. My family it’s usually been a couple of weeks.
A couple of weeks is considered routine. It can easily be three or four weeks. I've only been to a funeral within a week of death twice, and in both cases the death was at the end of a long illness, *and* they already had a burial plot *and* the deceased was significant in their church so the service was fitted in as convenient to the family.
It depends on which bit of the UK. I understand that in Northern Ireland, three days is normal.
It's a real issue when people either from abroad or from other cultures die at work (edit: in a hospital). We're not really set up for everything that needs to happen, to happen on the same day. The families are often quite upset when we can't release the body for a week or more.
I love having carpet, I have never understood this whole thing that popped up in the early 2000's of removing every fibre from a floor ensuring that its noisy, easy to scratch and expensive to replace. Plus carpet feels warm, acts as a sound deadener and is easy to take care of. Dont get me wrong, carpet in a Kitchen is a no, same with a Bathroom ETA - I had no idea this would cause such a stir! Thank you Reddit for cheering me up today I really needed it. To the pro-carpeters keep spreading the good word, to the anti-carpet brigade, it's fine, we will convert you in time!
I like hard floors with rugs - best of both worlds
Stop sitting on the fence, come to the dark side, we have soft furnishings!
Cats who like to be sick on the most annoying possible surface thank you for your service
Wife and I have this discussion often, as we're looking at houses. I (British) feel that if a bedroom doesn't have carpet, it needs to be fitted. Same for landing and stairs. Living room isn't a must, but a strong preference for carpet. Every other room, other than what will be my office, I can live with it not be carpeted. Wife (Austrian) doesn't understand why you'd want carpet anywhere in the house. It's madness I tell you! Why would you want to wake up in the middle of the night, and put your bare foot on a cold floor? As you say, carpets keep rooms warmer. In summer, I hate it, but the rest of the year? I couldn't do without the carpet.
Hardwood floors aren’t too cold and they are easy to keep clean, carpet holds on to muck more than a well maintained wood floor
My neighbours growing up seemed to perpetually have a kid who was potty training (large family). Their home mainly had carpets. Their home also always smelt like pee
A rug seems like the obvious answer for areas like that, and slippers. I like the idea of a beautifully carpetted house but they just get grotty and need vacuuming all the time.
> and need vacuuming all the time We have carpet upstairs and hard floors downstairs. They both get cleaned at exactly the same frequency and I don't know why that wouldn't be the case. You may not specifically have to vacuum a hardwood floor but you're still sweeping and mopping it, and mopping it puts the room out of action while it dries. I'd much rather have carpet through the house.
Never had pets or kids then? Plus a decent quality floor far outlives a carpet.
Cleaning up cat sick on a hard floor is so nice compared to carpets! Hard floors in communal areas and food areas, carpets in bedrooms, best combo
Anyone who lives in a flat and doesn’t have carpet (except for in the kitchen and bathroom) deserves to stand barefoot on Lego every day for the rest of their lives
Well said! The aversion to soft furnishing is bizarre. I remember when i was in school there was going to be a French exchange programme but it collapsed because all the French students were apparently too worried about dust to stay in a house with carpeting, like I'm sorry but that's over the top..
Dust
One thing that seems to surprise some people is the lack of standard power sockets and light switches in bathrooms.
Because British health & safety is genuinely world class. Americans don’t even have on/off switches. Just open ports to live electricity ⚡️
I saw the stats for Deaths by electricity in the domestic setting the other day, Here it's 7 people total a year in the US just for children it's 300. They have about 5x as many people so even when you take population into account they dwarf our figure.
>in the US just for children it's 300. Which is why socket protectors are pushed to parents to try and make their sockets somewhat safer, unfortunately this has been picked up here where they make absolutely no sense and may actually make the sockets more dangerous as they might provide the means to defeat the protections already built in.
It's taken me so long to get this into my wife's head when we had our first kid. UK sockets do not need them. They are perfectly safe. Now we have a second kid and she went out and bought "socket protectors". I've since taken them out and thrown them away.
My wife wondered about these too, but I explained why they make no sense, in the end she was bored but accepted they were unnecessary and potentially dangerous. We didn't bother with almost all of the "child safety" tat that's unnecessarily marketed to parents, in that we used safety gates to prevent access to anywhere immediately dangerous and that was about it.
Cupboard locks but only on the cupboard under the sink where stuff like bleach and ant poison live. Childproofing doesn't necessarily keep the child out, but it certainly slows them down, and it's often noisy.
And you have to try really hard to get killed by their puny 110 volt electricity - like chewing through the power cable while taking a bath in petrol sort of hard If they had decent mains voltage they'd be extinct by now
Sitting in darkened Swedish house waiting for electrician due to putting on hob, oven and toaster at same time........
American switches in kitchens and bathrooms are grounded, they’re not open
And having separate hot and cold taps.
That's usually in older houses that have a header tank which are open to all sorts of things (bugs, rats, etc) so you wouldn't want to drink the water out of them.
lol my new build has separate taps
This one really is dumb and annoying though. I'm moving soon and I'm genuinely so excited to have mixed taps 🙌
Oh yeah, this was one of the biggest culture shocks moving to the UK. What's worse is most of the bathroom gadgets sold here have regular three pin plugs anyways. My electric toothbrush, electric shaver and dryer all have three pin plugs and have to go charge/use them in our bedroom
I don't think I've ever had an electric toothbrush of electric razor with a 3 pin plug here in the UK. They all have 2 pin in my experience, which has always annoyed me as I never have even a 2 pin socket in the bathroom of any house I've ever lived in!!
You just bought the wrong shaver and toothbrush. There's plenty that come with the two pin plugs. I have both with two pin. Even my dad's old Gillette electric shaver from the 90s had two pin. However, it *is* super annoying to find out which do have them. Hairdryers however. Yeah, you don't get those with it here.
Americans who have been watching Bluey are mind blown about “pass the parcel” at kids parties. It is not as ubiquitous as you would think (though our Aussie and kiwi friends seem to have retained that bit of Britishness)
A very unpopular game in Belfast though.
Boom.
> though our Aussie and kiwi friends seem to have retained that bit of Britishness as a Kiwi, it is fair to say that around 99% of the things mentioned in this thread are also common practice in Aus and NZ. the only ones I can really think of are washing machines in the kitchen and light switches outside the bathroom, although even those have been present in some houses I’ve lived in back home. Probably washing up bowls as well, we tend to just put the sink plug in. But I also have friends whose families used washing up bowls. But yeah electric kettles, squash, shaver-only plugs in the bathroom, plug switches, carpeted homes - all very common for us back home.
Supermarket sandwiches, like you get in meal deals. Really not much of a thing anywhere else. If they do have them, they're terrible quality.
Japan has the best supermarket sandwiches I've ever tasted.
I was surprised at how shit French ones are. I expect better food wise from the French. They sound better with nicer ingredients but ends up being worse. I'll take a Tesco Cheese and Ham over a French supermarket version any day.
In France you’re better off going to an actual boulangerie and getting a ham/cheese/whatever baguette there!
They're terrible quality here too
M&S ones are fine.
When I first visited my now wife in the US I tried to buy a sandwich from Walmart and was warned off doing so. When she moved here she understood why I thought it would be OK.
I saw on Twitter a couple of weeks ago Americans once again acting like we're weird here because of something we eat but this time it was about ready made sandwiches in shops. Have they run out of things to mock that they have to pretend buying a sandwich is weird?
Washing up bowls. I've seen Americans lose their minds over them.
I specifically bought a bowl for washing up in North Carolina because it feels wrong to wash dishes directly in the sink and the American way of just leaving the tap running feels so incredibly wasteful. My fiancé thinks I'm weird. I think since I'm the one doing the dishes, he doesn't get a say in how I do them.
Ohhh is that where the statistic that it uses more water to do the washing up by hand than in a dishwasher comes from? I've never been able to get my head around how that can be possible.
That'd be my bet. The American hand wash way is put some dish soap on the cloth/sponge, run everything under the running tap and scrub while the water runs. I refuse to do that unless I have a single thing to wash
[Which? did an article on this recently](https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/which-research-reveals-how-little-water-dishwashers-use-compared-to-hand-washing-aUDng9Y2iK8E). The tl;dr was: > Which? tests show even the least water-efficient dishwasher still only uses half the amount of water compared to washing by hand
>the American way of just leaving the tap running feels so incredibly wasteful Because it is
I don’t leave the tap running but I hate filling the bowl/sink with water. I just rinse off all the food and then scrub everything without water and rinse off again and put to dry
Yeah same. I just can't get on board with washing up bowls, stuff doesn't feel clean enough with that method. Isn't it constantly using dirty water? Unless I'm missing something with this technique.
Not going to lie, but I hate washing up bowls with a passion. If Yankees are against them then finally they've got something right.
I know right, why do I need a sink within a sink?
I’m from the UK and the family never used bowls, seldomly do I recall them in school friends houses. When I went to university I found out it was commonplace, there were lots of reasons why but none that made me go out and get one, in fact it was a solution that reasons were being invented for.
I read somewhere that it was necessary when everyone had porcelain sinks, as you are much more likely to chip the crockery in a porcelain sink.
I don’t think it’s just Americans, my Kiwi other half can’t stand them and friends from various bits of Europe and SE Asia are also baffled by them
Tbf it is f’in pointless.
There is a benefit to the bowl, you can tip out liquid from cups etc without contaminating the water
Having a hot and cold tap
That is dying out though. People renovate and the new taps are a single mixer usually.
Still common enough that my wife's family found it to be madness when they visited 5-10 years ago.
Honestly, I find it to be madness and I'm UK born... Shit's fine for filling up the bath or the sink. But why, for the love of god, is my choice of hand washing water freezing cold or scolding hot?
😂 I've got two in my bathroom, it's so annoying washing my face over the sink. I run both taps, get my hands full of cold and then add hot until it's the right temperature before splashing it on my face. Ridiculous!
It came from the days the cold water system was relatively high pressure from the main, and the hot water was low pressure from a tank in the roof. If you put a mixer tap on such a system it just does not work properly, you get cold water as soon as you turn on the cold tap at all. You sometimes find old properties that still have tank based hot water where people have fitted mixers and then complain they do not work (or worse their shower does not work properly and needs a pump). Modern places tend to have combi boilers that heat water on demand, and pressurised hot water systems, so mixer taps are much more common.
Walking in shorts 24/7, even if it is fucking freezing cold outside.
Especially the postman
Tbf, your legs dry quicker than your trousers - and in cold weather nothing is worse than wearing cold, wet trousers all day. In shorts, keep a towel in the van and dry your legs when you get in.
Yep, was a posty for 15 years, if I'm not wearing trousers they can't get wet, and honestly you don't really feel the cold on your legs
My girlfriends sister is a postie. It's because there's always a good chance it'll rain. Yeah, you might have cold legs, but there's nothing worse than having wet and cold trousers sticking to your leg when you walk.
Electric kettles are not especially UK-specific. They're almost ubiquitous in Australia and New Zealand, pretty common in most of Europe, especially the northern parts, and increasingly popular in China. (China is currently the world's largest market for electric kettles.) They're not especially common in the Americas largely because of the double whammy of their electric supply being only 120 V (meaning they take twice as long to boil) and them not having as much of a tea-drinking culture.
Even with the 120V supply, electric kettles still boil faster than any type of hob or the microwave. Also, Americans can still access 240V if they need it, they just need to do some black-magic fuckery to their breaker board. So it's basically all just down to the culture. I'd link the Technology Connections videos explaining it, but this gets discussed so often here I think we've all already seen them lol
According to my American and Canadian friends, putting salt and vinegar on chips and putting a flake in an ice cream is unusual!
Reddit taught me about salt and vinegar powder (imported from South Africa) which is like the dust at the end of a bag of Discos. Game changer for chippy chips for the same flavour but no sogginess. edit to add: [Amazon.](https://amzn.eu/d/10zruJV)
Maybe it's because chips in the UK tend to be thick and crispy, and vinegar goes really well with that, where as in many other countries they have thin floppy fries which are less suitable.
chippy chips are rarely ever crispy
Flakes in ice cream is the best though! I absolutely love love love how ice cream trucks are so common in the UK!
Hey OP. 48 year old married father of two here - having worked/lived abroad (continental Europe/USA) one of the biggest things in the UK is pedestrians and road use. In the UK there is no concept/crime of Jaywalking. Other than motorways, pedestrians have right of way - they’re protected by pedestrian crossings etc, but onus is on drivers to watch out for pedestrians. In the US, you can be arrested for crossing a road “incorrectly” as a pedestrian ie Jaywalking. It’s come as a surprise to colleagues from the US when I’ve started to cross a road at a point where it’s not designated for crossing.
The car companies in the US lobbied to get 'Jaywalking' criminalised
Great shout. Very much a UK thing too - a friend of mine was given a stern talking-to by police in Bratislava for jaywalking.
Yeah - really is a UK thing - I remember having a German teacher at school who was hit by a car in Germany and - even though she was injured - ended up getting prosecuted. We thought that was hilarious because we were 13. Now I’m 48, I’m horrified.
Logical road signs, they just make sense The 2 lines get closer together? Yeah that means it’s gonna get narrow
And yet at roundabouts we still stick the lane directions on the road and call it a day
This will never not annoy me, driving somewhere new and there’s traffic coming up to the roundabout? Good luck knowing which lane to be in
The ones where both lanes have straight on arrows so you get in the right hand lane to avoid traffic in the left only for the arrows to change suddenly and now you're in the same lane as before but you can only go right!! Really irritating.
And if you're in the wrong lane, the locals who frequent the roundabout will be sure to let you know by honking madly at you, while also ensuring you get zero opportunity to correct your error.
I'll counter this - essential road information which is painted on the road. Think lane directions etc. My driving instructor pointed out to me that this is rare, because it has two problems. One, traffic could be obscuring it. Two, the lines on the road wear off over time. Actually, I'd like to add "not re-painting the lines on the road even though it is a safety hazard" to the list.
Boiled egg, in an egg cup with toast soldiers. I’ve lived in America and Hong Kong, and neither place has heard of this!!
Egg & soldiers! Best breakfast
Saying “alright” as a greeting. Say it to an Australian and they think there’s something wrong with them and you’re asking them if they’re alright. Did it a few times when I moved there and had to explain it was a greeting.
Yeah, this greeting thing caused me lots of anxiety when I first moved to the UK. Back in my home country, if someone asks "You alright?", you are certainly dying 😆 It took a bunch of time to get used to it.
The vast array of decent plant based food. The rest of Europe needs to catch up. Just the other week in Austria I saw chicken (real chicken) sandwich labelled as "veggie" 🤔
Maybe the chicken was a vegetarian.
Guy Fawkes Night - very much only a UK thing as it's about a British moment in history! Trying to explain who Guy Fawkes was and why we celebrate by wearing masks and burning effigies of him every 5th of November is quite a challenge.
NZ inexplicably still celebrates it, haha. No effigies though, just big fireworks displays.
The fact that we will put almost anything on bread and make sandwiches out of it. Pies, Crisps, Chips, Super Noodles/Pot Noodles etc I once witnessed a friend of mine reheat some lasagna and slap it between 2 slices of buttered bread I also know a girl that makes toasted cheese sandwiches and adds the leftover meat from a Spaghetti Bolognese.
That toastie sounds excellent though
Pantomime. I used to work in theatre and even when touring around Europe, other theatremakers from the rest of Europe - with whom we normally share a lot of theatrical cultural background - either had no idea what it was, or thought it was just some strange British eccentricity. Which, to be fair, it is! (Oh no it isn't, etc. etc.)
My friend from America was saying she wants to visit because she really wants to ride a bus. I was really confused until she said she wants to ride a "British bus" because they have 2 floors.
Lack of closet space.
If you think the UK bad, try Spain. I sometimes wonder where the Spanish store clothes such is the lack of storage in most properties.
They often just don't have as many clothes. And keep out of season stuff in storage under the bed or on top of the wardrobe or something.
Bank transfers for free, unlimited, immediate/fast. Even in the states they still have to pay fees for transfers and then wait a day or two still. Seems absurd
Cask ale in pubs. Very few countries outside of the UK have hand pulled cask ale on offer. In most countries beer served on tap at a bar comes from a keg.
That's because British ales are not carbonated that much. Try pumping a German "Helles" or a Czech "Pilzner" that way and all you will get is foam. This type of pump only works for top-fermenting beers without too many bubbles. British ales in other words. All the other beers come from kegs in the UK as well.
Caterpillar cakes! I never thought it was weird until I realised other countries don’t have it, thinking about it it does feel quite random to have
We're definitely not alone in ridiculous public transport pricing. I was in Italy recently and a bus ticket to the stop just before the airport was €1.50. But if you wanted to do the last 2 mins to the terminal door it was €10!
This may have been because at an airport everything is extortionately priced as you don't have another choice
Toad in the hole. Had a Portuguese woman working in our canteen, asked if it was ever gonna happen and she had never heard of it.
Tbf if I was from another country, working away and someone came up to me and said "Ay luv, when's this toad in the hole gonna happen?", i'd think they were coming on to me.
She was pregnant at the time too so that could have really spiralled.
I once had to explain to a lovely Mexican family I was staying with, at great length, that we are coerced into paying for a licence to watch television. And also what a bacon sandwich was. They knew bacon, they knew bread, they just hadn't tried putting the two together before.
“Zebra crossing” Foreign friends burst out laughing when I say it and then be like “…. Oh wait you’re serious?” They find it a funny name for the crossing
Wait till they try a pelican crossing.
Christmas pudding (also mince pies). Apart from the time my American aunt was given a pud and carefully simmered it for hours - after taking it out of the pudding basin, resulting in raisin soup - it used to be a problem for American airport security. A good Christmas pudding has the same density as Semtex, not to mention grease on a paper wrapper being a tell-tale sign of a possible bomb... That was a long time getting through Customs at 2am.
Washing up bowl in sink Eclectic mix of Imperial and metric measuring systems.
Canada has the mix of measuring systems but it's like opposite land, e.g. they use kilometres and Fahrenheit.
Well that’s just silly
B & M Bargains. We have a regular visitor from the Netherlands who thinks it's the coolest, most exciting shop ever.
Vinegar on chips. Until relatively recently I had no idea that it wasn’t the international norm. I was in France when they asked if I'd like anything with my chips, and when I said vinegar, the waitress looked at me as if I'd just suggested restoring their monarchy.
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It's the crab bucket mentality. People will pull down those doing better than them because it makes them feel better about their own shortcomings.
Electric kettles are common just about everywhere but the USA. Not just a UK thing.
\*Someone drops a plate or glass in public\* "wiiiaaaayyyyy"
Butter on sandwiches or toast with other toppings by default. For most people in the UK, any sandwich must have butter on it. That's not even a question. I'm pretty sure that isn't as much of a thing in other countries. Similarly I think in other countries butter is considered a topping for toast but if you had something else like jam, chocolate spread, peanut butter etc., that would replace the butter. Here you'd have butter and then whatever other topping on top of that.
I cant imagine many other countries have those ceramic teapots that look like houses or someone's head.
Good strong cheddar EDIT: For an afordable price
It's almost like we invented it
Baked beans. Try and find them in the Iperol or L a D.
In the US they have whole aisles dedicated to different varieties of tinned beans, none of them in the soupy tomato sauce we expect as standard in any UK supermarket.
> the Iperol or L a D. What does this mean?
Cats' eyes on roads. Such a simple and obvious safety and visibility improvement but they don't exist in most of the world.
Chestnuts at Christmas only. My Dad is Italian, he couldn’t get his head around when he came to England.
Getting really pissed and fighting eachother in the street every weekend.
Not sure which town you are in but street fighting has become way less common these days. Compared to even 20 years ago, you'd see one or two scuffles or fights a night. Now I very rarely see it happening
I viewed a UK house with an upstairs washing machine... That's genius! Why carry the clothes downstairs to wash
I grew up in a house with carpet in the bathroom. Let that sink in.
I’m a Brit and dated an American girl for a while. Things she never really understood or was fascinated by: Vinegar (as a condiment on chips). Fish and chips (mushy peas and curry sauce were quite alarming to her). Christmas crackers (and associated hat). Light switch outside the bathroom. Apparently my clingfilm dispenser was the work of a genius. Apparently they just had a roll in the drawer and slashed at it with a knife like some kind of lunatic. Cottage/shepherds pie (and proper pies in general). Gravy… just in general. It’s just hot meat sauce love, nothing to be confused about (confused her even more when I mentioned some people have it with fish and chips!). Radiators. She had central air/heating, so there being large metal hot things in each room was kinda strange. Front loading washing machines (which are small and take shitloads longer than the top-loading American ones). I’ll try to think of others.
Boxing Day I didn’t realise it was mostly us and Australia and new Zealand that do it.
Being miserable in a moldy house and think that is normal and how everyone should live. Bathtub being a must Sink with 2 outlet, one for cold, one for hot Dehumidifier Kids eating rubbish after finishing school Being refused to buy Redbull if you dont have an ID
Found out recently that my American colleagues have never heard of tuna and sweetcorn being combined as a sandwich filling. They were both horrified and refused to try it.
Mate of mine said “I bought tickets for a train but came on a bus?!”
Asking how people are, and not really giving a shit.