When I was in Germany I noticed an awful lot of streets called “Ein Bahn StraBe”. Every single city had one! I knew that StraBe meant “street”, and wondered why I’d never heard of an apparently renowned German by the name of Ein Bahn. I figured he must be Germany’s equivalent to Martin Luther King, Jr.
(it means “one-way”)
When driving the Autobahn in Germany, my mom commented on how “Ausfahrt” must be a large city since we passed so many exits for it. 
This happened ~20 years ago, when I was in the U.S. Air Force, stationed at RAF Chicksands in Shefford, England. I had been there about nine months, and was doing my best to ‘go local’, learning the language differences. I had just gotten a new dorm mate, midwestern kid, and was taking him into town. The kid didn’t want to really expand his palate, and when he spotted a KFC, he became very happy. He’s ordering and he wants some extra biscuits. Now, our UK posters might immediately recognize the problem. KFC doesn’t serve any type of ‘biscuit’. What they have is a (dinner) roll. They also had some sort of apple pie, which they were offering as a substitute. The kid was befuddled, and I was doing my best not to laugh as he tried to get his point across.
For those of you in the US wondering what was the problem, UK ‘biscuit’ = US ‘cookie’. Sadly, the kid never did learn not to be so cocksure about everything.
A friend and I were visiting Amsterdam, and on our first day we were in a small grocery store buying some supplies. The door to leave the store said “Uitgang - Thank you for shopping!”, so I pointed out how nice it was that they put an English translation on there, and Uitgang must mean ‘thank you’ in Dutch.
Proud of our new word, we used it constantly over the next week. Uitgang! Whenever we were served food, got directions, paid for a museum, bought something at a store, we’d say it. We got some funny looks for that, and it wasn’t until we had returned from our trip that we found out it means ‘exit’.
I guess this is finally the thread for this…
My first visit to the States was with an old college friend, just after I graduated. We can to Richmond, so he could stay with his ex-girlfriend, with whom he was planning to rekindle things.
Said re-kindling failed at the first hurdle, so to avoid an uncomfortable situation, and to handle his broken heart, I performed the typical male friend role. I woke him up the next morning to go on an all day bender.
Anyway, there we were, more than a little jet lagged, drinking profusely, and I chatted away to the somewhat deranged looking ex-special forces mid-50’s gentleman sat next to me at the bar. After about 8 hours of drinking, and about an hour chatting to this guy, I ran out of cigarettes. The machine in the bar was broken. So I leaned over and asked my new, military friend, in a somewhat drunk, yet still impeccable English accent…
“Excuse me mate, do you know anywhere I can go near here to pick up some fags.”
I heard on All Things Considered once about an American woman visiting the UK who was perplexed when her host said, “I’ll knock you up at 8:00.” In the UK, that just means, “I’ll wake you.”
Your post reminds me of something my father told me. He had been born and raised on a farm all his life, so his worldly knowledge beyond his rural existence at that point in his life was rather limited. When he was getting prepared for his college enrollment the people he spoke to told him to go visit with Dean Smith, Dean Jones, etc. My dad was not familiar with the word “dean” as a person’s title, so he thought, “Man, there sure are an awful lot of guys named Dean around here!”
I know this is straying from the OP, but I guess it could still count as a form of “culture shock”.
I’m not real churchy. I went to a Catholic wedding recently, and was giving it the ol’ college try with the standing, kneeling, etc. After several sentences that were spoken aloud by everyone but me, (I was plenty surprised by that the first time, lemme tell you), I recognized one from Sunday School. “I know this one!” I thought, so I was extra loud to prove to everyone that I knew one. As I said “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” I realized that everyone was saying some other version. Something about trespassing. I shut the hell up after that.
My folks spend a certain amount of time down in Australia. A few years back they were at a party with a bunch of their Aussie friends and everybody was kind of lazing around. My mom wanted everyone to get up and do something so she said (loudly) “We’re not just going to sit here on our fannies all night are we?”
Shocked silence followed by shrieks of laughter.
In the US, “fanny” is a cute way to say “butt”. In Oz it’s evidently the equivalent of “cunt”.
That’s also when Mom figured out she shouldn’t call her little waist pack a “fanny pack”. It’s a “bum bag”.
I am so sorry I wasn’t there for that one.
I feel your pain. My wife is Catholic and talked me into going once, when everyone started reciting along with the priest it startled me as though a firecracker had gone off. She found it funny. Later, I was wondering why she kept poking my arm as I was sitting comfortably admiring they’re thoughtfulness at providing “footrests”…ooh boy, she found that decidedly not funny.
Not quite so crude. “Fanny” is more analagous to “vagina”, though somewhat more infantalised, than it is to “cunt”. You’ll usually only hear kids saying “fanny”, though adults will still rip on those crazy yanks who talk about “scratching their fanny”.
And yet you lived. 
Are US-style biscuits even available at all in the UK & what are they called there?
Sadly, extremely rare. They’re so uncommon they’d most likely be called “biscuits - err, not like our biscuits, American ones; they’re like scones but they’re not sweet”. Something like that.
I’ve only seen an American-style biscuit once in the UK, from a KFC sometime around 1977—78. It wasn’t very nice, but then neither was the chicken.
I imagine they gave up on them here at around the same time McD’s realised no-one was going to buy their root beer (at least more than once).
My grandmother was raised Amish but has been Mennonite since she was 18. Although she’s traveled the world she still lives in the house she grew up in, so she’s still immersed in the culture.
We were sitting around one night and she was talking about some young people she knew, and said that this one guy had “nailed” this girl.
It was pretty shocking to hear - but it turns out that she meant the guy “got engaged to” this girl. My aunt took her aside and corrected her, so that she wouldn’t make the same mistake in public…
Yup, same thing - I was in Deutschland and my friend and I were walking around town and got lost. We asked a local for directions back to the house we were staying in.
He couldn’t remember the address, but it was on the corner of Altstadt and Ein Bahn StraBe. The guy could hardly talk, he was laughing so hard.
That was the same trip where a female friend of mine, after a large dinner, sighed, “Wunderbar - ich bin voll”, causing much consternation in the family with which we were staying. They carefully explained that she meant to say “ich bin satt” - “I am satisfied”.
“Ich bin voll” means “I am pregnant”.
Regards,
Shodan
“Ich bin voll” - literally meaning “i’m full” -actually means “I’m drunk”.
[/hijack]
They said “pregnant”.
:shrugs: - this was in southern Germany, and about thirty five years ago.
Ihre Meilenzahl kann sich verändern.
Regards,
Shodan
On the same note - as a Canadian, I was warned not to wear any of my clothes containing a “Beaver” logo - very common here, but evidently not meaning “cute, industrious big rodent” to most in Australia.