I stayed in Australia for a bit. Now, you must know my experience there was colored by the fact that I was having a miserable time. I had moved there for a relationship and a bunch of promises that were soon broken, and a lot of lying and horrible horribleness. So I ended up sitting around and longing to go home.
I missed stupid things, like the abundance of Diet Pepsi, no download limits on my Internet, driving on the other side of the road, people with St. Louis accents, our television shows, our huge American cars, ten-gallon cowboy hats and awful country music, my dad, my dog, the landscape of our interstate highways, our weather, just everything I swore I’d never miss. Things I didn’t appreciate, even if they were ridiculous.
I was one of those types to constantly rip on the U.S. and talk up how great it must be to live elsewhere. But homesickness is a strange experience. It can undo years of well-crafted opinions and pet peeves, and turn the things you hated passionately into the things you long to have again.
It was another twenty-one hours on a plane to come back. When I came through U.S. customs, the man behind the counter glanced at my passport and said, “Welcome home.” I was exhausted, smelly, sad, and that was just enough to put me over the edge. I teared up and nodded. I’ve never been so happy to be here, and I swore I’d never move away again. Sure, I’ll visit other countries, and I’d love to go back to Australia (if only for the beer). But there’s just no place like home.
American living in Germany here. I miss (in this order):
The Daily Show and Colbert Report (I watch them online, but it’s somehow not quite the same)
Instant ramen
Toilets with an obvious flushing mechanism that you don’t have to pay for
That’s really about all I can think of.
ETA: Land O’ Lakes instant hot chocolate powder goes at the end of the list.
You DO realize that UCSD was designed to be a place that wouldn’t have any places for students to gather and protest, because UC Berkely had Sproul Plaza? They deliberately designed a campus that had no central meeting places. I guess the Price Center is the only thing they could come up with.
UCSD is a depressing place. It’s surrounded by eucalyptus trees and dirt. Give me UC Berkeley any day.
You know, if anyone pays attention to me at all, they know I don’t snark about other posters. But I really have to say that if you started to this thread to get honest opinions and subjective accounts, making sarcastic comments and explaining to people why their opinion or experience was wrong or invalid is going to drive them away. You aren’t asking people to share the things they missed/would miss, you are asking them to justify their feelings, and that never goes well.
Mark my words: your “better half” is going to miss some very irrational things, stuff that you are not going to understand and that you are going to see clear better alternative to. If you have this same attitude with her, it’ll do permanent and significant damage to your relationship.
To answer the OP, ( and I am stealing this from Garrison Keillor), in a country where I was not a native speaker, I would desperately miss being funny or getting other people’s jokes. I could live with everything else, I think.
It’s interesting a lot of people feel uncomfortable being the outsider. Whenever I’ve traveled or lived abroad, I’ve known at all times I’m a foreigner, but that’s never bothered me. I’ve felt far more uncomfortable and unwelcome in certain American neighborhoods.
If you have tried it and think it is just round bread with a hole in it then you are probably getting the fake bagels I was complaining about despite a scoffer or two above. A good bagel is fairly rare to get in the US outside of NYC itself. The problem is I don’t really know how to describe a good bagel. It is a matter of texture, taste and consistency that chains like Manhattan Bagel and most supermarkets are completely clueless about.
I’ll quote Wiki but it still does not fully resolve the taste issue. The bolding is mine.
I like bagels. I don’t care if they’re from NYC or not. Never had one from there. They are different from any other type of bread I’ve had, but I don’t think NYC has a secret recipe, unless it’s car exhaust, rat & cockroach poop. ;)
I wasn’t mocking. I’m curious. If my tone seemed that way then apologies. Does Diet Pepsi not exist in Australia or did the poster of that comment mean that it was flavoured differently? If it doesn’t exist there I am surprised, if it does, why miss it? Now Unsquare Dance did say the ‘abundance’ of Diet Pepsi so perhaps it is a niche product in Australia. It isn’t here and is available in pretty much any newsagent.
Where I was, in Melbourne, Diet Pepsi was very hard to find, as were many diet sodas, save the old standby of Diet Coke—plenty of shops didn’t even carry that. It was a very strange experience to walk into a store and see a cooler full of drinks you don’t recognize.
I know I’m late to the thread, but the biggest thing I miss being in England is convenience. It’s hard for me to be spontaneous. It always seems to be a chore to do anything here. Finding parking in villages. Driving through towns, dodging cars parked on the road. Going to market right after work at the latest. Seeing no hours posted on business’s doors. Bagging my own groceries. Being at least 5 hours ahead of friends in America. Lack of plentiful overnight dry cleaning shops. Extremely slow service at restaurants, by American standards.*
As others have mentioned, being an outsider. Dublin’s a big city so it may be different, but in the small villages around me in East Anglia, the pubs aren’t very friendly to outsiders. It feels like I’m intruding just by walking in. I don’t even bother any more.
Another thing is the lack of random friendliness. Walking down the street, no one smiles or says “Hello” or responds when I say it to them. Hell, I’ve lived here a year and people in my village still won’t make eye contact! I know it’s nothing personal and that’s how things are but I’m not accustomed to it.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many great things about living here (2-pound coins, the exclamation “Brilliant!” and blue Smarties,), but this post is what I’d tell someone moving here from America.
*Side rant-Do all the non-US waiters dematerialize into another dimension after dropping off the meals? I’m going to radar tag mine so I can find them when I’m ready to leave, not 2 hours later.
Very true. Speaking as an Englishman, whenever I’ve visited the US, I’ve always been amazed at the spontaneous friendliness and approachability of the average Yank. It is a cliche, but true all the same: why are we Brits *so *reserved? (I have to say I’m as guilty as the next man when it comes to this).
Does it help if I tell you it’s not just a British phenomenon? I’ve run into more cultures that are reserved like you than friendly like the US. Spontaneous friendliness is an American thing, just like letter-sized paper and black cookies/biscuits.
I know that this is the wrong way round, but what I really miss from the US is your breakfasts. Mmmm…corned beef hash… (Where’s the drool, drool smilie when you want it?)
You can get it here, but it just doesn’t taste the same.
Things I miss from the US (foodwise):
The garlic and cheese biscuits (ie scones) from Red Lobster
Chipotle Vegetarian burrito (so bad for you yet so delicious)
Original flavour (yellow packet) Lays
Cans of Canada Dry Ginger Ale
My GF’s omelettes
my GF’s Granny’s Thanksgiving dinners
It seems like some of your problems may suggest their own solutions.
It’s often said that we’re prone to oversharing: “Hi! Nice to meet you! No, don’t get up; I just flew in from the States, so I’ve been sitting for hours, and my backside is aching. Speaking of which, I had a colonoscopy last month, and I couldn’t sit down for a day and a half. Of course, I was sitting on the toilet for half a day beforehand. Let me tell you about it…”
