for all those that are residing outside the uk.
lets let the others at 'home' think it's not all roses.........
I lived in South London (very briefly) once.
I just could not get to grips with the cultural differences, and had to come back to the right side of the River.
The South is a different country to The North. I'm getting used to it, but it's taken ten years.
I can't understand the french road cycling club situation. I seem to have a choice of 3 old blokes, or a full team outfit including 3 team cars, team coach, team mechanic, team bikes (for the 1st cats) etc.
I want betwixt the two. And they don't seem to do Sunday café club runs. Sigh!
breakfast... sometimes I could just kill for a decent bagel.
I'll have to think about it... Can't think of anything off hand... German Skiers perhaps, or German queing techniques in general. 🙄 But apart from that nothing... Mountainbiking is good, snowboarding is close, (5 mins walk). A good crack with my mates perhaps, Germans don't really know how to have a good crack with one another...
The blatant Racism.
All these arsey English 🙁
Can't get Marmite here. Or golden syrup.
Hard to say - miss my mates and the sense of humour mainly (plus the occasional drunken idiocy).
There is a lot of humour in English that is completely missed by most foreigners even if they speak English.
I also miss Channel 4 but not ITV...
Oh yeah! Golden syrup and pickles, I do miss that. A good cup of tea is hard to find out here too... 🙁 And things like Red Dwarf on the telly... Although there are good things on the box here too.
The English........................
currently back in the UK but have lived in Italy and Germany, going back to Italy 2010. I missed (in no particular order):
Pubs with real ale and log-fires
A good bacon sarnie
Sausage rolls
Comedy (although italians are quite funny...but Germans...)
Good Chinese/Thai restaurants
the apparent lack of personal space in this country.
Oh and, mogrim, I have plenty of marmite and golden syrup at mine!
Grate? The cost of car insurance in BC is outrageous, mainly because of the monopoly insurance provider [ICBC] 👿
Missing? Like Woodey, I'm missing a good bacon buttie. I have, however, got used to the beer, having found several tasty micro-brews... 😀
beer gardens.
twiglets.
beer.
Very little. It rains a little more here than in England.
The South is a different country to The North.
you said it mate! i can't believe how much i stand out when i open my mouth 'up north' with my soft southern tones, may as well wear a bright red badge with 'not from ere'.
my soft southern tones
don't you mean "my [b]grating[/b] southern tones" ?
Well, in Holland the list is pretty long ...
The landscape, or lack of it
The weather - like living on a N Sea trawler
The food
The poor selection of food in the shops
The limited opening times of the shops with the poor selection of bad food
The selfish pig-headed self-righteous natives
The endless bureaucracy
Those are the main headings that spring to mind. When I visit my sister in the UK it is such a culture shock to walk around Tesco, to encounter people that smile at you, to see a hill - feels like Heaven!!
I though Holland was picturesque with nice, friendly people...
When i lived in the US the main thing was pricing stuff as $0.99 or similar then adding tax on at the till which means you've got to pay $1.04 or some similar stupid amount
[i]I though Holland was picturesque with nice, friendly people...[/i]
A lot of tourists have the same idea. But you never drive, or deal with the man in the tax office, do you?
Oh ... another thing that I hate - the abysmal service in restaurants. A lot of expats have just given up on the idea of eating out. When we go to a restaurant we never have dessert and coffee - it just takes too long. We have ice cream in the fridge at home.
currently back in the uk, but the most annoying thing about most other countries I've lived was unfortunately the type of Ex pats who spend thier lives whining about pretty much everything, I avoid 'em like the plague. met the odd one who is ok but mostly I pretend to be Basque, Mustachistani or Afrikaans just to annoy them and hopefully make them leave me alone. That and chicken and mushroom pot noodle longings
don't you mean "my grating southern tones" ?
maybe, although i was born in the north.
NZ - driving - or lack of driving skills to be more accurate. Awful awful drivers, truly appaling. Mainly because up until a wee while ago if you got all wrong the only thing you'd kill would be yourself and then a sheep.
forgot to ask to say where you were in the world.
in germany:
-the supermarkets are too small and the selection likewise.
-crisps which they insist on calling chips come primarily in salted or paprika flavours.
-can't get off any form of public transport without fighting your way past intent on getting on as soon as the doors open.
-no proper chips.
-german dress sense. that is to say general lack of. they have class but no style, very much the opposite of britain.
-being formal/nice to people you don't know/work in bank/shop. the 'du' and 'sie' thing pisses me off. not sure if they are stuck up because of the language or the language makes them stuck up.
-waitning for a red man to cross the road. complete lack of road sense when it comes to moving traffic.
-complete respect for the rules (see above as an example).
-people telling you off for having: crossed against the red man, rode up one-way street, riding on pedestrian side of pavement. petty things really but it's the fact they go to the trouble to say something. usually ask if they are police and then turn away and carry on as before.
-having fun. they generally don't. many have said to me that the english are much lockerer, that is to say relaxed and open, friendlier in general.
-dogs in shops, restaurants, everywhere in general. was once a time when kids were not welcome in restaurants but dogs were and there would be signs informing you of this.
-'verboten' signs everywhere. das is verboten, parken verboten, betreten des grundstucks verboten. can they not say please. please do not park here, please do not walk on grass/please keep off....
-english words. it would seem it is cool to use english words. doesn't neccessarily matter if they are pronounced correctly or in the right context, but it is cool, ja.
german radio. it is universally crap. TIPP if ever near or in austria listen to FM4. brilliant mix of music esp. compared to what else is on offer.
-work. they fegging love it.
-ausbildung. or apprenticeship. without one you are nothing. no such thing as learning on the job, which incidently in germans call 'learning by doing'.
-war jokes. it is an often overlooked fact that they are funny.
-people turning to make eye contact so that they can start tutting to each other when a train bus is two minutes late. it's sure to be there and you won't miss your connection because this is germany and they allow for it and train/bus goes a little faster to make up for it. DON'T WORRY!
-being told all the time the finance crises is britains fault and that we have poisoned europes banking industry.
just realised that is quite a long list. strange because i'm really quite happy here.
J
I lived in Germany for 4 months (Heidelberg). I loved it...for 3 months. The last month I hated because they just got to me. For much of the same reasons as you point out. The bei Rot stehen crap really annoyed me.
However, overall I loved it and I want to move to Austria asap but I can't find a way yet. Thanks Mr. Brown!
Point is though - wherever you are, you'd better make every attempt to enjoy it pretty quickly because life moves pretty fast...
In NZ and really miss quality sausages, the ones over here are rubbish.
Don't live abroad but one thing that pisses me off when on hols is people thinking I'm English 👿
Aussie beer is alright but so expensive. Australian beer is actually a lot cheaper in NZ.
I love being back in South Africa - I grew up here, but there are a few things that I find "hard to live with" if that's the right phrase.
Biggest thing is probably the difference between how the majority of the white people in this country live compared to how the majority of the non white people live.
I have lived in Germany & the Middle east as well as many places in the UK and can't understand why would anyone want to move away from here. Other countries have no appeal for me, we have a hugh influx of immigrants for a reason - because the UK is the best place anyone could choose to live. The sooner the UK population starts realising just how Great Britain really is the happier we will all be.
As Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz - "Theres no place like home".
Cheap beer, empty trails, good banter, good food...hang on!
Driving is a bit krap, but hey, this is Madrid!
I guess nothing really, there is the same level of numptyness but without the agression of the UK.
thing that pissed me off in Oz was the bread. british bread is pretty crappy. mostly limp sliced loaves on offer. Ozzie bread is a poor imitation of that. really crap. only just suffices as toast.
also think most Ozzie beer is crap with the exception of those from Coopers in adelaide. Coopers Pale Ale and Strong were my favourites, albeit much more expensive than the others. just don't drink the dregs.
german tv is also crap. most of the programming is dubbed and that that is home grown is just copied from tv show in england.
the beer here is good though. esp. franziskaner weiß bier, although i have developed a belly in the last few months. bread too, but again puts on the pounds. developed a massive urge to eat nussschnecken, nusshörnchen and nussschleifen whenever i see them.
Hmm, Sweden.
The weather, Its either, grey, dark grey or really dark grey.
The bland food.
Poor quality fresh food in supermarkets.
The idiots at the Tax office.
The supposed perfect social security system that's not so perfect.
Swedes, very friendly bunch, almost over friendly, but try and go out for a social beer with them, or to socialise in general with them is impossible.
Silly government run off-licences, open at 10am, close at 6pm (when everybody is at work) Mon-Fri, 10am till 2pm on a Sat, closed Sunday.
Only beer with a max strength of 3.5% sold elsewhere.
Piss poor driving standards, how some people pass their test I'll never know.
Massive problems with rising crime rates, But the police would rather spend lots of man hours catching people doing 2km over the speed limit, than actually do anything about the real crimes going on in front of their noses.
I could go on...
alpin's rant sounded a lot like me after a year of living in Germany. My main gripe here is the lack of the idea of service. I live in the old communist side of the country and a lot of the older people who work in the service industry tend to be so rude it's almost funny. (In the DDR if you worked in a shop or restaurant you had one up on your fellow comrades and so a lot more power.)
That and the Spießigkeit of my neighbours.
In Oz and the beer is good (not sure what alpin was drinking)but very expensive - so now I drink less, I make my own bread and chill out.
What I do miss is good public TV. No matter what you say the BBC is f'in brilliant compared to most others. Breakfast news here is pants.
Triple J on the radio has no ads and better music than R1 (or 2) but the news makes R1 look highbrow.
The racism is a problem.
I miss cold weather 32 is a cool day at the minute - but then I am going to Tasmania.
But what I really miss about the UK is the p*ss poor transport system, the whinging, the rain, the floods, the mass hysteria. Unfortunatley we just got New Labour here still it will take 7 yrs before people realise.
spießig...... middle class or narrow minded. being in germany i'm guessing the latter.
customer service does not exist here.
the frigging banks are closed for two hours at lunch (the time when everyone who works has a chance to go to the bank) and closed at five (when everyone else finishes work).
went to a shoe repairers today to get a starp on a rucksack restitched. bloke was a complete arse telling me it wasn't possible as he was a shoe repair shop and therefore dealt with shoes. i could see the frigging great sewing machine behind him used to sew leather but he told me it was suitable for nylon. penne! eventually got it done at another shoe place run by people from the east, i.e. not german.
emu bitter? VB? tooheys?
that said there are a few little brewries in Freo that are worth a visit. would still rather drink Cooper Pale even though it was 40$ a crate as opposed to 30$ for those mentioned above. this was seven years ago mind.
and Cascade is for poofs.
In NZ, really is a long way from family back in Scotland.
As mentioned driving here is ludicrous,most people think indicators are painted on the car. no one says thanks when you give way to them.
State highways are crap. you have to stop to let pedestrians cross the road on the main highway between the 2 largest cities, imagine that on the M1.
large Methamphetamine problem which entails in pschos carving up people with samurai swords and then saying they can't remeber doing it.
limited choice of retail goods.
Still wouldn't go back to scotland unless bribed with a bathful of tenners with Scarlett Johannsen in it.
loads of good micro brews all over now
Sweden - spent a year there and loved it. The food was not great, and was mega-expensive, but was better than I expected (and a lot better than Norway or, or course, Holland). But the best thing was the Swedes - really nice, friendly, helpful, patient when I tortured their beautiful language. Also, fantastic unspoiled scenery.
I'd go back tomorrow, if I had the choice.
Nice here
To be honest I miss the "british way of life".
Place here is filled up with little ****, trains are most of the time late. Uni is a disaster and could use with a good H&S.
I think at the end of the year It's very likely I'll go back to the UK. Wouldn't mind living in a nice place like York.
DrJ - MemberSweden - spent a year there and loved it. The food was not great, and was mega-expensive, but was better than I expected (and a lot better than Norway or, or course, Holland). But the best thing was the Swedes - really nice, friendly, helpful, patient when I tortured their beautiful language. Also, fantastic unspoiled scenery.
I'd go back tomorrow, if I had the choice.
I'd be leaving tomorrow given the chance...
Well I really loved living abroad (Finland).. the novelty/adventure factor really made the drudgery of daily work much more bearable.
Things I missed about the UK:
Big hills for biking (Finland's got many many small ones)
Rocky trails for biking
Being able to be on a hill and look out across a big view (loads of trees in Finland)
British Tea
Malt Vinegar
Salt and Vinegar crisps
Curries (and foreign food in general other than Italian and Chinese)
Chip shop chips
Verdant fecund broadleaf forest with loads of undergrowth and greenery
The coast
Green-ness in winter
Things I liked and now miss about Finland:
A general sense of chilled family orientated contentedness about people
The scenery - stunning lakes, forest, twisting undulating trails forever
The access laws - go anywhere on anything, swim anywhere, the land is everyone's
Did I mention the scenery?
The winter - crisp, cold snow.. it does actually crunch like glass when it's cold enough
The winter sports
The sunlight - light till 11.30 midsummer, which isn't very useful but it's light til say 9 for 4 months
People's affinity for the outdoors - no-one called you 'mad' for wanting to ride your bike in the woods, they all understood it
The fish
Things that annoyed me about Finland:
The price of cars
The slowness of spring in terms of green-ness
The shortness of summer
I would go back, no worries, if a job came up. Skiing through those frozen woods in the winter dusk was just.. well I just can't describe it. Deeply moving for me.
I'm in Germany too; and after 2 years there's not much I don't like - I even like German food and can now cook proper Spätzle, Reibekuchen etc. etc.
But, and it's quite a petty but, we travel by train a lot (mostly because they're cheap and aces), and nobody lets us off with a pram at a stop before barging on and blocking the aisle; and NOBODY understands queueing! Grrr.
That apart, all good. I even find some German comedians funny, although a lot of the humour seems to be of the: "why can't men tidy up after themselves", "why does it take women so long to get ready" observational type bobbins.
tarka - do you watch Stefan Raab, he is a funny guy
Raab, Bully Herbig, Rick Kavanian, occasionaly Michael Mittermaier, there are a couple of fairly humerous people in Germany nowadays, but not quite side splitting... yet. But close. Two films: Der Wixxer and Periode Eins did make me chuckle occasionaly. 😯
i find german humour severly lacking.
was at the girl friends the other week. six of us sitting in kitchen and one of her housemates, rather odd lad at the best of times, kneels down in front of the fridge looking foe eggs and says
"ah, wir habe n zwei eier zu wenig"
i said "oder du hast zwei eier zu wenig?".
the GF, another housemate and i pissed ourselves laughing. the others were schocked and the lad was alomst in tears and i had to apologise for making a joke at his expense. thought that would have gone down a storm in england.
was surprised by one comedian on tv talking about barrack obama. he said that once he was in office merkell would be straight down the tanning salon, get really deeply tanned and be all over obama. struck me as rascist. there was nothing funny about what he said other than the fact merkel would essentially get 'blacked up' which isn't particuarliy amusing.
Considering that most Germans consider themselves well cultured I also find a lot of the comedy here a bit base. They love Mr Bean for God's sake! It's all a bit LCD. We are pretty lucky in the UK for having such an uncensored comedic media. I could never imagine that a comedy such as the League of Gentlemen or even Little Britain could ever be produced here (they did do a version of the office but it was terrible!).
Can someone translate Alpin's witty anecdote please?
Well, I am South African but have been living in England for the last six years.
So what grates me about the foreign country I live in?
To be honest I like England a lot but two things come to mind that grates me:
The YOBS and the SNOBS.
@ molgrips.
'we've got two eggs too few'
'or you've got two eggs too few'
eggs also means testes
[i]ah, wir habe n zwei eier zu wenig"
i said "oder du hast zwei eier zu wenig?". [/i]
We've got two eggs too few or have you got two eggs two few?
(eggs in German is also slang for men's testicles)
Some great oz beer here now but expensive. Still petrol is cheap and the cost of living generally lower i think.
I really miss the countryside of UK / Europe. Proper cold weather. There's some over east in what passes for mountains but sod all out west.
Driving ability / courtesy - zero out of 1,000,000
Competently scheduled TV - set your video for 20 mins either side to stand a chance. 1st episode of new series of (insert your favourite here) on Monday at 8.30 and the second and third are on back to back on Sunday at 4.15 for no good reason and without warning. Remainder of the series on Tuesday at 9.30
Expensive / compulsory car insurance. Really sometimes I miss it. I'm an old (selfish)git now so not so important but at least it kept the tribes of local teenage ****wits out of 300hp utes.
Cat up a tree news. Over now to our on the spot reporter to see how tiddles is doing while uncovered goes world news
Ozzy rules 'football'
Constant reference to the UK or anyone from the UK as english. You can have flaming red hair, an accent like a 70's Billy Connoly and wear full highland battle dress and they ask you about back home in England. (At least they realise their mistake when you explain rather than not understanding like the average American)
Calling all sweets 'lollies' Eh?
Calling all bed sheets, blankets, quilts etc 'Manchester' What?
TV / radio adverts that yell louder to increase effectiveness.
Generally backward attitude / resistance to change. We're about have another referendum on keeping daylight saving after a 3 year trial. We've had a 3 year trial and now a predicted 78% will vote against it. Apparently they are worried their curtains will fade. I kid you not.
For all that I'm not going home.
The rather sad, small-minded chip on the locals' shoulders about 'the English'
in Switzerland..the opening of supermarkets till 7...i get home 10 mins before it closes everytime..sat they close at 5 and sun all day! its like the uk 10yrs ago..but im getting used to that.
the lack of indicators here is incredible..annoys me when driving aswell as cycling..
apart from that im kinda lucky..
supermarkets in germany are a little better by one hour but your local petrol garage minimark pisses all over most super markets here, both in terms of size and choice.
indicators are only to be used as you are turning, not 50m or so before. same goes on autobahn. turning indicator on as you are halfway over the line is the norm.
and don't you dare give way, let some-one out of a side road or parking space. that just isn't the german way.
I've had people look at me as if I am an absolute idiot for letting them out of a side road when it was my right of way. In this part of Germany the driving is super aggressive too which I put down to them all learning to drive in Trabbies! When I learned to drive it was drilled in to me that any action I make that makes another driver have to alter their direction speed etc. is bad driving. I see this practically every minute on the German Autobahns. The norm is to wait until the last minute then pull out into a faster lane right in front of someone making them have to brake heavily. One last thing I don't understand is the lack of cat's eyes on the Autobahn either.