That took me a moment to figure out. Tea is always hot, and if you want it sweet, you add the sugar yourself. Iced tea on the other hand does come sweet, and is quite disgusting any other way.
Oh, and I guess to show that Canadians (or at least this Canadian) like to straddle the fence between the US and the UK, fish and chips, mincemeat pies, and pumpkin pie are all delicious.
I remember a friend telling me about the time that he was hitchhiking in Australia several years ago. He was standing alongside the road with his thumb out and several cars passed him by. Then this small car came to a screeching halt and this huge man sorta “Unfolded” himself out of the car and said to my friend “Hey! What did you do that for?” To which my friend in a very nervous voice replied with a slight stammer “I was only trying to hitch a ride.” “Bloody Hell! You’re an american aren’t ya?” and then proceeded to teach my friend that the thumbs up gesture can be taken as a rude gesture in Australia. My friend was taught non violently I might add. Yes he did get a ride.
:smack:
Yes, I know. I went into McDonalds once in the 3 weeks I was in Australia. I saw a strange sandwich on the menu so I thought I would try it, always up for new things dontchaknow. Then I took a bite. :eek: What is that!?!? Beets? I HATE BEETS!!! 
First time I ever heard of that custom. Still can’t believe you do that to poor defenseless meat.
Now mincemeat pies, those are good. 
Lok
The Eastern European McDonald’s I have been in are clean (i mean spotless) have friendly employees, food is “not made till you order it” (sound like somewhere else?) is cooked well, and at a couple of them in Bucharest, the McD’s are sit-down places where they bring you a menu, etc. Also the bathrooms were clean and not rank.
Coming from the US, this is very strange indeed. 
There are no ice cubes in Germany. Ok, in a few restaurants, but domestically, no.
They don’t drink water from the tap. This has never been explained satisfactorily to either Mr. Ujest or me. There is nothing wrong with the water (taste, contamination) they all drink water with carbonation. Which is something to get use to.
Hey, I can eat raw herring, raw fish and raw ham ( not together) but don’t carbonate my water.
In England, in some older communities, public restrooms have toilet paper that is almost exactly like the waxed paper squares used in bakeries. It was, to say the least, a bit of a shock to encounter this and then have to use it. It wasn’t nearly as efficient as regular toilet paper.
In Germany, the pocket kleenex’s are really excellent quality tissues. Kinda like the higher grade paper napkins. They ( my husbands 84 year old grandmother) finds the kleenex situation over here appalling.)
In Germany, a Green Country, they do not bug bomb wasp nests or spray at all to keep these little fokker’s away from outside play and eating areas. Every where we went, there were onions waiting to be cut open to use on bug stings. It works, too. My 6 year old son was stung 6 times on the upper thigh and we marinated him in onion and that stopped the pain and his crying. We look forward to when the german cousins come over here and they can witness us using 12 cans of Death Spray to kill off the tiniest wasp nest. Ozone layer? What’s that?
I once interrogated a German colleague about this. His response was something like, “Why do you want to drink water without the gas? This is anyway boring.”
Now that’s just crazy talk! What better complement to deep-fried battered fish than thick chunks of homestyle fries? Fish and chips are not uncommon in the US, either. A lot of low-end family style restaurants 'round here have it on their menus and coastal towns (particularly Seattle) seem to do a brisk business in it. I mean, heck, it’s the standard meal at Long John Silver’s and McDonald’s even serve Filet-o-fish with fries, which is basically a bastard son of fish & chips.
I once was asked that question when I had dined by myself. Resolved to lose weight, after that.
Hmm… worth a shot anyway. I walk by it every day, after all - I live all of a block or two away from it. Hubby says it’s good there, maybe I’ll stop by this afternoon.
Cod, though. Cod. I’ll try.
A lot of German bathrooms I’ve been in had requests for male guests not to pee standing up. There’s even a sticker I have around somewhere with a guy standing up in front of a toilet with a big red circled slash over it. I suppose it’s not that strange a request, but Germany is the only place I’ve noticed it.
Many bathrooms in Europe have washing machines in them, which is not where you expect to find one in the US. In fact, all the Hungarian apartments I’ve lived in had washing machines. In the US, you’d generally use a laundromat if you live in an apartment.
Bathrooms and toilets (WCs) are often different rooms in Europe, as someone observed. Brits people would amuse themselves when I asked where the bathroom was, quipping “why, do you want to take a bath?”
Drinking alcoholic beverages is permissible in public places in Europe (At least in all the countries I’ve visited. At any rate, if there was a rule against it, it wasn’t enforced. Oh, how I miss that freedom!) Drinking beer on a bus or subway was not uncommon, either. Having open containers in cars was OK, so as a passenger I could actually enjoy a beer on a sweltering 20-hour journey across the continent.
Foreign residents and visitors to Britain are often perplexed by the institution of the washing-up bowl.
This custom may exist elsewhere, but to many of us the practice of washing your greasy dishes, cutlery, glasses and pans by immersing them in a bowl of soapy water, as opposed to under clean running water, is plain icky.
Sorry for the confusion. I meant iced tea, of course.
Don’t many places over in Europe close up at 5pm or something? Here, many offices do, but a lot of retail stores stay open late.
I’ve also heard many older English homes have very small fridges, so one must go grocery shopping everyday. Is this true?
(This from ivylass, who has two refrigerators as well as a chest freezer.)
And the showers are very very small?
My most recent travel was to Scotland and I only noticed a few things that stood out:
Smoking. It was a real shock to this Californian to find restaurants without even a non-smoking section. It was like being transported back to the '70s.
Pay toilets. Almost never seen in the US.
Fried bits. Every restaurant plate I ordered seemed to have at least one deep-fried nugget of something on the side–mushroom, potato, fish, potato-and-fish.
Asking for the bill. In American restaurants, the server will eventually come and ask if you are ready to go. In Edinburgh I always seemed to have to ask first.
Rainy-day walking. Everyone seemed to just go about their business whether it was pouring or not. Baby carriage? Just cover it in plastic and head out to the shops. I’ve lived in some rainy places and generally it seemed to me that people try to keep out of it more in the U.S. Maybe it’s just because we are in our cars all the time.
My fridge in Europe (Budapest) was very small—about half the size of a typical American fridge. This presented no problem to me, as I much prefered shopping every day or every other day than shopping for the week. I have more-or-less taken this habit back to the States with me. Of course, it helps that I have a huge grocery store a block away.
Stand-up showers in Eastern/Central Europe were relatively uncommon, too. Baths often came with a hose and a shower attachment, but you would basically sit in the tub and wash yourself with the showerhead. The stand-up showers I did see were those individual-type shower units and not connected with a bathtub, as many are here in the US. They were maybe 1 to 2 square meters in size.
And, yeah, restaurants let you eat in peace and the waiters don’t try to chase you away the instant you’ve swallowed your last morsel. On the minus side, free soft drink refills are unheard of. You don’t even get free tap water in most places.
LOL, I think in Germany they have 2 sections in public areas, smoking and chain smoking…I saw corner outside cigarette machines in Gaertringen…
Here I was thinking that “kitty party” was a play on words. You know, kitty=pussy? Damn, I’ve got a filthy mind!
Remind me if I ever travel overseas to bring ice cube trays with me. I HATE lukewarm drinks. My drinks must be icy cold.
Cold drinks are an abomination. Room temperature is the way to go for everything, except for chai, coffee, hot chocolate, et al which need to be warm, bordering on hot.
The first time I traveled to England, I loved the perplexed look I got the first time I asked for ice with my soft drink at a fish-and-chips place.
But after getting used to drinking iceless soda, I am now baffled at how we Americans fill a soda glass 3/4 full with ice while complaing about the 20-below weather. (I have been told that cold drinks absorb faster – true?)
I now generally ask for soda ‘without ice’ when it’s really cold outside.
I lived in France for several years, and some things I noticed were:
Different areas of France use different numbers of kisses when greeting friends. Most areas are two (including southern France and Alsace), but several areas in the western part of France are three.
The apartment we lived in had a separate toilet room and bathroom. I’ve also seen this in Canada and the UK, so it wasn’t surprising. But there don’t seem to be shower curtains at all. When you take a shower, the water is expected to go everywhere, unlike here in the States, where shower curtains are used not only for privacy (since the toilet is usually right next to the shower), but also to keep the water in a limited area of the room–namely the bathtub. (I did see shower curtains in dormitories, but not in family houses.)
Europeans in general shake hands MUCH more often than Americans do. In France in particular, if someone walked into the room, there was a huge interruption in whatever was going on with handshakes and bises (cheek kisses) to greet the newcomer. Here in the States, cheek-kissing is pretty much unheard of, and handshakes are reserved for people you are meeting for the first time.
One French tradition that I brought back to the States with me was the tradition of greeting shopkeepers. In France, if you go into a small store, the person there normally greets you by at least saying “Hi” (or the French equivalent), unless they are extremely busy with other customers, and customers are expected to greet the shopkeeper. Here in the States, it is generally acceptable to ignore the person working behind the counter (and for them to ignore you), unless you need help with something in the shop. I worked in a small shop for a while in the States, and was quite used to being ignored by the customers (even though I normally greeted them when I saw them). However, Americans still consider the French to be rude…