Mundane but Significant Differences Between Countries

[Martini_Enfield]

@Anne Neville

Does anywhere but the US have take-and-bake bread? They’re loaves of bread that are mostly baked, but not entirely, and you put them in the oven and finish baking them at home. Nice warm bread without having to make it from scratch.

You can get it from the supermarket here quite easily, FWIW.

Some of us don’t like this either- I definitely don’t.

The reason we have this insane system of not including sales tax in tag prices, though (as I’ve heard it) is that sales taxes vary from state to state and sometimes even from town to town. And large retail chains don’t want to have to put different prices on stuff that is going to stores in different places, or target the prices in their TV or print ads. Do sales taxes not vary between states in Australia?

No, they don’t. Sales tax is a uniform 10% across the board- items either have the GST (Goods & Services Tax) applied to them or they don’t. Either way, it’s against the law to advertise “Tax-exclusive” prices anywhere except Duty Free stores.
The same is true in New Zealand as well.

This is another thing that varies by state. In New Jersey, it’s illegal to pump your own gas. Here in the Bay Area, stations that offer full service are relatively rare.

I’ve never seen a full-service petrol station anywhere I’ve been in Australia, although there are still a few in NZ (not many, though). On that note, we pay for our petrol after we’ve finished filling the car, not before (as in many US petrol stations).

[Anne_Neville]

@MelCthefirst

It was in Sacramento and I was going to LA airport

Wow- that’s a long trip to the airport- almost 6 hours according to MapQuest…

[Cat_Whisperer]

@InvisibleWombat

That may explain it. I eat at very few diners.

Even at Denny’s or Perkins restaurants, you don’t get the check until you’ve finished the main course and they’ve asked about dessert.

Your’s and acsenray’s posts are getting dangerously close to condescending here. I know where we were eating, and I know how they brought the check, and we didn’t eat at nothing but “Bob and Edith’s 24-Hour Diner.” You experiences may be different from mine, but please give me the courtesy of accepting that I am reporting my experiences as they happened to me.

[Kyla]

@Anne Neville

@Kyla

Here in BG, showers are usually not seperate from the rest of the bathroom. You just turn on the shower and everything gets wet.

Do you not have problems with mold and mildew taking over your bathrooms?
Where do you keep your towels so they don’t get wet?

Yup, mold and mildew is a problem. I dump my towls in a pile outside my bathroom when I take a shower. My cat always sits on them and then I have to fight with him to get them when I’m done. The rest of the time, I hang them in my bedroom to dry off.

On the topic of bringing drinks to restaurants, this is actually very common in Illinois (or maybe it’s just Chicago/Cook County?). I guess it’s hard to get a liquor license or something, but many restaurants advertise themselves as BYOB. I thought it was really weird when I first moved to Chicago.

[Nava]

Spaniards tend to think Italy is… dunnow, some sort of cousin country. Darn expensive hotels (“they have it too easy, that’s the problem”) and they’ll rape your wallet if you look anything like a tourist (same as we do for our own tourists, what, them people in bermudas are fair game year-round); similar language, similar climate, similar politics, similar many things. Both countries tend to have the largest meal at midday (unlike those strange northerners) and have ideas of “midday” that barely start at noon (not “end” at noon, unlike say, the Belgians).

But in Italy the first dish seems to be unavoidably pasta; things that in Spain would be a first (rice, salad, veggies) are the “vegetarian alternative” to the seconds of fish or meat.

[Acsenray]

@featherlou

Your’s and acsenray’s posts are getting dangerously close to condescending here. I know where we were eating, and I know how they brought the check, and we didn’t eat at nothing but “Bob and Edith’s 24-Hour Diner.” You experiences may be different from mine, but please give me the courtesy of accepting that I am reporting my experiences as they happened to me.

I’m sorry if I came off as condescending, but if you read what I wrote, I didn’t actually contradict anything you said. I merely reported my own data point.

[Gary_Robson]

@Anne Neville

Not only that, but many restaurants here will refuse to serve eggs with runny yolks or rarer-than-medium hamburgers.

I ordered a hamburger cooked medium rare at a restaurant last month, and was told that they couldn’t serve anything less than medium well. I didn’t end up having a hamburger that day.

No steak tartare, either

@featherlou

Your’s and acsenray’s posts are getting dangerously close to condescending here. I know where we were eating, and I know how they brought the check, and we didn’t eat at nothing but “Bob and Edith’s 24-Hour Diner.” You experiences may be different from mine, but please give me the courtesy of accepting that I am reporting my experiences as they happened to me.

I’m not sure where you got the idea I was being condescending. I certainly don’t mean to be. I accept your experiences at face value. I’m just adding my own data, which I can sum up this way:

In my own personal experience, there tend to be two types of restaurants. In one kind (which I’ll call “fast food”), you order at some kind of counter and pay for the food up front. This includes delis, sandwich shops, fast food, and so forth. In the other kind (which I’ll call “table service”), you sit at a table, order your food, and get a check after the meal has been served. This includes “high-end” restaurants, cafes, family restaurants, and so forth. Every table service restaurant in this town (including all of the bars that serve food) brings the check after you’ve eaten, not with the main course. I can’t recall any time in recent memory getting my check before I’d eaten dinner, and I would consider it quite rude.

There’s nothing condescending in that at all. I eat at cheap places and expensive places. I eat in this small Montana town and in restaurants whereever I travel, which in the last year includes California, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Arizona, and Colorado. My experiences have been consistent.

[Merkwurdigliebe]

Yes, Denmark is the world’s worst when it comes to bathrooms. My previous place had a bathroom of about 1.5 square meters with a toilet, sink, and shower. You could have sat on the toilet whilst showering if you would have wanted to. Also, there is never any kind of barrier, so you have to do the degrading act of squeegeeing the floor, naked, afterwards. This, by the way, is common even in newer showers. I’ve seen quite new places that had this. I got lucky and I have some kind of weird sitting tub-like solution now though. I’m slightly afraid to fill it to capacity, considering how the floors here creak!

I found it odd, though, how countries like Denmark, could have such primitive areas that refuse to give way. For instance, it is by no means unheard of to have toilets attached to the back stairwells and showers in the basement. This is one of the richest countries in the world and they still have communal showers in some places!

Also, most houses (old ones) have two sets of stairways. One is in the back. I suppose it’s a kind of fire-escape, mandated by law. The back stairs are always narrow and twisty. Newer houses don’t seem to always have them.

[Anne_Neville]

@Merkwurdigliebe

This is one of the richest countries in the world and they still have communal showers in some places!

That brings up another cultural difference: Europeans seem to be more willing to tolerate having a shared bathroom in a hotel than Americans are. Here, even the really cheap no-frills chain motels will have private bathrooms in each room, with at least a toilet, sink, and shower (possibly also a bathtub). When you’re booking a hotel room in the US, you can pretty much assume that there is a private bathroom- not so in Europe.

[naita]

@GorillaMan

Drinking while driving: the comparative popularity of manual transmissions in Europe makes this an awkward activity for a lot of people, which is perhaps why people haven’t gotten into a habit of it.

In Norway all the major gas station chains sell thermos mugs with a year of free refills of coffee included. The people who buy them (like my friends and family) drink that coffee while they drive.

[Brynda]

@featherlou

Your’s and acsenray’s posts are getting dangerously close to condescending here. I know where we were eating, and I know how they brought the check, and we didn’t eat at nothing but “Bob and Edith’s 24-Hour Diner.” You experiences may be different from mine, but please give me the courtesy of accepting that I am reporting my experiences as they happened to me.

But here’s the problem, for me at least: The experiences you describe are pretty darned rare, in my experience. So when you (a visitor) say this is common in the US, those of us who live here and haven’t seen this are going to say “Huh? Whatchu talking about?”

[gardentraveler]

I think, though, that everyone needs to remember that “common in the U.S.” is very difficult to prove. There is remarkable variation in what’s “normal”, even within states.

I went to a wedding reception Saturday night about 1 1/2 hours from Columbus. It was in a “very nice” private club. The hosts assured us that the food was some of the best prepared in that town. The “delicious” mashed potatoes were from a mix. The gravy was from a can. The veggies were a nice mix (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) but were hopelessly overdone. It’s possible that the fried chicken, although tasty, was from the freezer section of the local food wholesaler. The ladies who worked at the club came around with a cart and scraped food left on the plates into a container and piled the plates on the cart. ::shudder:: It was appallingly like my grade-school cafeteria 35+ years ago. I had no idea such places and cuisines still existed. Every Bob Evans restaurant I’ve ever eaten in had better food.

Made me much less willing to dismiss any claims of “common” even if they were specific to Ohio.

GT

[Wendell_Wagner]

You know, nearly all of the things that people are mentioning are facts that one learns within the first couple months of living in a new country. Whether one can take food away from a sit-down restaurant, what names one calls restrooms, how and when one uses a credit card, how grocery stores are laid out, when to take one’s shoes off, what kinds of food can be delivered, what one can buy in various sorts of stores, how light switches and electrical plugs work, what size and shape food is packaged in - all these are things that one learns fairly quickly when one comes to a new country. I mentioned the items about burial and circumcision because it can often take years to learn about such things. Does anyone have any examples of differences between countries that it takes years to discover even if you’ve lived in both countries?

[Nava]

@Wendell Wagner

You know, nearly all of the things that people are mentioning are facts that one learns within the first couple months of living in a new country. Whether one can take food away from a sit-down restaurant, what names one calls restrooms, how and when one uses a credit card, how grocery stores are laid out, when to take one’s shoes off, what kinds of food can be delivered, what one can buy in various sorts of stores, how light switches and electrical plugs work, what size and shape food is packaged in - all these are things that one learns fairly quickly when one comes to a new country. I mentioned the items about burial and circumcision because it can often take years to learn about such things. Does anyone have any examples of differences between countries that it takes years to discover even if you’ve lived in both countries?

Well, I’ve been in Switzerland for six months and I still have no idea how the medical system works. In France it took me a couple hours to learn it.

I can tell you that medical systems vary country by country, if that makes you happy, but hopefully a description of “how to use Spain’s medical system if you’re a foreigner without a local job” won’t be needed by anybody here.

[rhythmonly]

While I was in the Navy, I found myself eating at fast food places overseas, until I could figure out what parts of the local cuisine my “Americanized” tastes would favor.

This was almost 20 years ago, so these mundane differences may have changed. I was stationed in Japan at the time.

McDonald’s:

A 1/4 pounder was a soy burger, with teriyaki sauce and a half inch of mayonaise on top.

The apple pie had a potato chowder filling in lieu of apples. Yummy!

Shakey’s Pizza:

The most popular toppings were tuna, seaweed, and corn.

KFC:

Drumsticks still had the foot attached.

There was no such thing as butter for your biscuits, but there was a small packet of the most intensely flavored maple syrup that I’ve ever had.

Dunkin’ Donuts:

The chocolate glaze was bean curd.

I was in a department store one day, and thought that I smelled food. I took the escalator downwards, and found a supermarket in the basement.

Spaghetti:

Cooked noodles with tomato sauce. Sold ice cold, in a wax paper bag.

I’d purchased some breakfast cereal on the base, and wanted to get some milk. I spotted a half gallon carton that sloshed when I shook it. Not being able to read the label, I bought it anyway, and took it back to the boat.

It turned out to be Sake. Wheat Chex were never the same for me after that.

[iwakura43]

@cowgirl

*ETA: There is one significant exception: in England people can (and do) drink beer wherever they want. There are always people holding pint glasses standing in front of pubs, and it’s not uncommon to wander off with the beer still in your hand. *

This is one of the few things that has really weirded me out in Europe. While staying with a mate for two weeks in London, we hit the pub near closing time and didn’t finish our drinks before we wanted to leave–no problem, says he, let’s take the drinks and go. I was so uncomfortable leaving the pub with a glass in my hand I made him carry it for me. My friend walked out of the pub with two half-full pint glasses in his pockets like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

In Australia, voting is compulsory, as is saving for retirement. Employers must contribute 9% of salary to a “superannuation” (i.e., ‘old age’) fund which operates more or less like a 401(k), and I believe employees can be mandated by some funds to contribute as well.

University students commonly living on campus seems to be unique to America as well. I don’t know any Australians who don’t live at home or share a rental apartment relatively far from campus. The universities I’ve seen in England, Italy and Japan also seemed to lack dorm-style living arrangements.

[WhyNot]

@iwakura43

This is one of the few things that has really weirded me out in Europe. While staying with a mate for two weeks in London, we hit the pub near closing time and didn’t finish our drinks before we wanted to leave–no problem, says he, let’s take the drinks and go. I was so uncomfortable leaving the pub with a glass in my hand I made him carry it for me. My friend walked out of the pub with two half-full pint glasses in his pockets like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Wait, in actual glasses? Doesn’t the pub want those back?

[Baron_Greenback]

@Wendell Wagner

Does anyone have any examples of differences between countries that it takes years to discover even if you’ve lived in both countries?

Sense of humour is probably one of the trickiest to master. The British (and other countries - Australians and Kiwis seem to naturally understand) “taking the piss” thing can be baffling, apparently. The occasional use of understatement seems to confuse Continental types also.

[Baron_Greenback]

@iwakura43

University students commonly living on campus seems to be unique to America as well. I don’t know any Australians who don’t live at home or share a rental apartment relatively far from campus. The universities I’ve seen in England, Italy and Japan also seemed to lack dorm-style living arrangements.

Most universities over here offer accommodation for undergraduates, particularly for first-years. They are usually called “halls of residence”, and danker dungeons of skulduggery have ne’er been thought by man.

[Sunspace]

@Struan

Sense of humour is probably one of the trickiest to master. The British (and other countries - Australians and Kiwis seem to naturally understand) “taking the piss” thing can be baffling, apparently. The occasional use of understatement seems to confuse Continental types also.

What does “taking the piss” mean?