Culture shock can happen in different ways. Sometimes, you may experience it while visiting another country. Other times, it happens in reverse, when you return from your home country after spending a long time abroad.
But there’s also the type of culture shock where you think a particular item or practice is universal, only to find out that it is mostly unique to your country. This is what people shared in a recent Reddit thread, with responses ranging from avocado as a sweet treat to having an astrology section on the nightly news.
Have fun reading through, and feel free to join in on the discussion through the comments!
I thought every country had an official competition of just lying around under the tree. Turns out it’s just us
Edit: Since everyone’s asking for more details. It’s held once a year, during the summer and yes, it is outside. The location is always the same. Whoever lasts the longest, wins, so there is no set end date. The winner gets a cash prize of 200€. Everyone can enter, foreigners included. There are no age brackets. You can eat, drink, nap and talk. I’m pretty sure bathroom breaks are allowed (I don’t think it would even be legal to not allow them all things considered).
Sandwich toppings in squeezable tubes. There amour of flavours are vast – ranging from prawn cheese to caviar.
Christmas pantomime — they’re camp, silly plays aimed at children during Christmastime. It’s a normal thing that happens every Christmas in the UK and Ireland. They usually have someone in drag, and there’s lots of audience participation. You don’t realize quite how strange they are until you take someone not from the UK to see one, and they’re completely baffled.
I thought everyone ate & saw avocado as a sweet dessert (turns out a lot of people think avocado desserts are disgusting). i was genuinely surprised to saw other cultures eat it in savory dishes.
Those red solo cups. Apparently y’all think those are movie props. Haha.
NecessaryJudgment5:
I remember going to a party with lots of international students in the US. When they saw the red cups, they were all like “wow, it is just like in the movies!”
Sourdough bread being the norm.
Here, when someone says “bread”, they ALWAYS mean sourdough. It’s normal. You can buy it anywhere. Baking one at home isn’t big of a deal. It’s the toast bread that needs to be differentiated. So imagine my surprise when I found out that the world has flatbreads and toasts instead.
Idk how to describe it, but we have a dessert called kaahi, it’s basically very very crispy bread eaten with syrup and Qaymar (a type of cream cheese that only made in Iraq), yeah that tastes like heaven and no one eats it other than us.
Apparently a lot of people think mayo with fries is gross. In Belgium it’s probably the most popular sauce to have with fries (although I prefer tartar sauce).
The bars. In Italy, we have ‘bars,’ which are places where you get a coffee, a beer, a sandwich, or cigarettes, and you always find newspapers on tables. They’re a specific kind of place, not like your typical bar in other countries. I was stunned when I discovered that they aren’t present in all countries of the world.
I dunno how universal it is, but as a kid we used to make cinnamon toast.
Bread, butter (lots), then cover the butter with a mix of sugar and cinnamon, and toast it.
I loved it!
Sweet garlic bread.
In fact it’s sweet by default in Korea, so I relatively recently learned that it isn’t in most countries.
“Sizzling brownie (on a hot plate) with vanilla icecream, hot fudge and walnuts”. I think this is pretty popular in at least the urban cities in India, and my whole life I assumed it was something we imported from the west (because it is obviously not Indian flavors). Turns out it is an Indian concept and I have only found this specific combination in Indian restaurants in the US.
Yellow school buses! I have had so many people from other countries tell me they thought that our yellow school buses were a movie/TV thing only.
I don’t know if I ever thought they were “universal” necessarily, but I do find it amusing that folks thought they were mere fiction.
I was pretty shocked as a child to find out people in other countries usually don’t have rice and beans for lunch. In my mind, there was no other way of having lunch and blandly having a sandwich, a snack or a fruit seemed really wrong.
Sausage Sizzle outside of a hardware store. You get a sausage, you get a slice of white bread, you drizzle on some sauce and go into the store to get some cheap plywood or something, and it’s the best.
Stone & lbs as the main measurement of human weight. I don’t get why we use it either. No other countries outside of the UK & Ireland use stone.
For literally everything including animals else we use kg.
Таратор / Tarator – a cold soup made with yoghurt, water, diced cucumber, fennel, garlic, sometimes crushed walnuts. You usually just add salt, some people might add some oil and/or vinegar.
Here, homework and test answers are marked with a ‘krul’ instead of a checkmark. It looks kind of like a cursive letter R, with a big loop. I was surprised to find out other countries don’t do this.
Dish drying cabinets. These are practically in every house. I think people are starting to use them elsewhere as well, since, well, it’s great, but I don’t think a lot of countries have them common. Sweden maybe?
Fairy bread. First, you spread your butter thickly on a slice of bread, getting it right to the edges. Then, pour some hundreds and thousands — the little multicoloured beady spheres, similar to sprinkles — onto a dish, so you don’t make a mess. Finally, press the bread into the hundreds and thousands, buttered side down, and cut into triangles.
Chicken Salt. You toss this on your chippies and it just makes it taste so good, and it’s the best.
Flying ants. These things are like these massive insects that fly into the house when it rains, and then their wings fall off, and they fall to the ground, and their shredded wings are all over the floor, and you have to clean it up. And then you have these things crawling all over the floor.
I was trying to explain this to someone from America and I think she thought I was joking.
Strawberry pasta. Basically just pasta with strawberry sauce on top. My favourite is with frozen strawberries; you just blend them with sour cream, add some sugar, and pour that on the pasta. It’s yummy, especially when it’s a hot summer day and the pasta is warm but the sauce is cold.
Gravy with your fries. Order fries at any sit down in Canada and they’ll ask if ypu want gravy, I tried to order gravy for my fries in the states and they looked at me like I had three heads.
Edit; I fear I must clarify, I refer not to a poutine, but a side of gravy for which to dip your fries.
I didn’t know Clamato was mostly a Canadian thing until I travelled .. guess clams and tomato’s aren’t universally loved as a drink.
Las Mañanitas is the song people sing on birthdays. It’s totally different than ‘Happy Birthday,’ and it’s traditionally sung in the morning, to wake the person up. I thought they did it throughout Latin America, but it turns out it’s just a Mexico thing.
One of the things that actually surprised me about other countries is that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren’t more widespread. I figured it was kind of a standard thing in a lot of places, because “nuts and fruit” seems like a universal mix. Turns out it’s basically only an American thing, and peanut butter isn’t that popular overseas.
We eat hotdogs with bread, I’m poor growing up.
Have you tried Kraft dinner.
Drogeriemarkt. It translates to drugstore, but that’s not quite the same. It’s a store for everyday household items. Not a grocery store. There is a bit of organic food and some snacks, but mostly cleaning stuff, hygiene products, makeup, a lot of baby-related products. I was astounded to learn that even our direct neighbours don’t have these stores. My best friend moved to Switzerland and misses them a lot. You don’t know that you’ll need a DM until you’ve been to one.
We have sweets by the kilogram in all grocery stores. We had Americans visit, and they thought it was free samples.
Fried plantain! I love it and it’s such a Colombian side at lunch and more.
I didn’t realize that thanksgiving food wasn’t international. I understand that we’re the only country that celebrates it, but I didn’t realize that things like sweet potato casserole were also unique to us too.
Maybe moreso because i was too young but as a kid when i went abroad i was gobsmacked that they didn’t have Spezi (Popular drink in Germany that is basically coke with orange). In the end i just told them to mix Coke with Fanta, which they did, but that just isn’t the same.
Well this is definitely a New England thing, (though I have seen other regions of the states that eat it), the good old fluffernutter sandwich. Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff.
In Denmark we have chocolate sheets that we put on bread. It was only a couple of years ago I learned that it was non-existing outside of Scandinavia.
This isn’t exclusive to Canada, as it extends to some neighbouring states, but the concept of what a ‘cottage’ is. To me it’s always been a building (of various fanciness or sizes) in a forested area, most often on a lake where you go and do stuff like have campfires, swim, and go boating. In post-Heated Rivalry discussions, I learned that there is not a universal understanding for what a cottage is.
Remoulade – a cold sauce based on mayonnaise, mixed with finely chopped pickles, capers, herbs, and sometimes curry. We put it on everything! Fish, hotdogs, french fries…
All Dressed Flavoured Chips, I was shocked when I found that one out.
Biscuits and gravy and just biscuits in general. I thought it was just a normal breakfast item and everybody had biscuits with breakfast.
Fry Sauce. I’ve learned that it is even specific to my state in the U.S. , Utah. It has become a little more widespread over the years.
It’s mayonnaise mixed with ketchup. Sometimes people add other sauces like mustard or BBQ sauce to it, but usually just mayo and ketchup.
My uncle went somewhere in Europe and asked for fry sauce. When they didn’t know what he was talking about, he asked for mayonnaise and ketchup. They brought him out a bunch of each, then he proceeded to put them in a bowl and mix them up. They were very offended.
This is super regional in the US, but in New Mexico, if you order pretty much any kind of Mexican dish the question is always Red or Green (referring to what type of chili sauce you want covering your food). And the answer “Christmas” implies you want both red and green.
When I was younger I thought everyone used the Imperial system (don’t get mad at me I was like 5) but I couldn’t be more wrong.
Christmas crackers seem to mostly be a British thing, though I wouldn’t be surprised if they exist in some other Commonwealth countries.
Not universal, but I definitely thought Jiggs Dinner was at least Canada-wide when I was a kid (from Newfoundland). The looks I got in a Toronto bar in my early 20s, as I was trying to explain the bucket of salt beef my mom used to bring home for Jigg’s 😂
Corn bread. I had no idea it was an American thing. Apparently it’s not a thing in Europe.
The only thing I can think of is actually pretty specific, even here where I live which is the UK but I’m a big fan of half-and-half for your food.
It’s a Welsh thing but I didn’t realise it a turkey wasn’t a thing everywhere until I was about 11 years old.
Basically, say you order a chicken curry at the pub (first example I could think of!) and usually it just comes with rice and sometimes, depending on the pub or restaurant, you can have either rice or chips to go with the curry.
In Wales though, you can have both and it’s called half-and-half and you don’t have to pay so much more for extras or get way too much food given to you because you want chips and rice with your curry.
Sweet popcorn is the default — and it was the only option in cinemas for my entire childhood and teenage years, as far as I knew. It blew my mind when I found out as an adult that most of the world eats salty or mixed popcorn. I eat it mixed sometimes now, because my boyfriend was not raised in Portugal and prefers it, but it’s still really bizarre to me.
1. Smetana.
2. Being able to avoid idiotic paperwork and bureauceacy by registering almost everything online.
Do other countries have ketchup chips? i thought it was an everywhere thing but then my cousins moved to the US and said there were no ketchup chips there. maybe that’s changed. they would load up on ketchup chips whenever they came to visit.
In Philadelphia, the best sausage sandwiches in town are all at Home Depot, we use rolls though.
Also, when I was a kid we used to butter bread and cover it in sugar.
FREE REFILLS… what the hell, if you get a drink somewhere in the US as long as it’s not alcohol, unlimited free refills, and water brought to you by default when going out to eat.
It’s so weird to pay for every single refill.
Lemonade. Like proper lemon, water, and sugar lemonade. Everywhere else it’s a carbonated lemon soda.
John William’s Olympic theme from the LA Olympics is played for every NBC broadcast, so I just assumed it was the official IOC anthem heard globally… turns out it’s just an us thing.
IFood, an app for ordering food, I thought it was an international app, but it’s Brazilian.
Bob’s is a fast food chain better than McDonald’s and Burger King and with the best milkshakes, it’s only in Brazil and I thought it was from the USA lol.
Taylor pork roll and scrapple. Turns out they weren’t even country specific. Outside of south eastern PA and west NJ they’re practically unheard of. Though scrapple is from Germany and apparently popular there.
In Texas, sliced white bread served with your barbecue. If you’re buying enough for a few people, they’ll often give you a half or whole loaf still in the plastic sandwich bread bag. When I lived in Boston, I remember someone telling me about having visited Texas and eating barbecue at “that place that serves it with white Wonderbread.” I was like, “Sir, that is every barbecue establishment in Texas.”.
Chocolate chip cookies. I really thought that was just the default cookie for everyone.
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