What was the worst culture shock you ever experienced?

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Mine is a two-way tie.

1. Going to see my long-distance girlfriend in San Diego in 1994, when I was 19; except for a weeklong trip to Seattle (which is a lot like Minneapolis anyway except really hilly) when I was 13, I'd never been to the west coast--or anywhere, damn near. She, two of her friends and I went to a '50s-style restaurant with cars for tables (cf. Pulp Fiction, only it wasn't the same place) and parked the car in what looked like a peach-colored sand castle. I freaked (for pretty much the whole trip), and I am not proud of it.

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 28 October 2002 07:04 (twenty-three years ago)

2. Driving west with my friend Jeremy and his girlfriend in a van we all put money in on. We stayed with Jeremy's aunt and uncle and their kids in South Dakota, and despite the fact that I'd lived in Minnesota my entire life, I'd rarely been outside of the Twin Cities--I was a city kid, with very little understanding of the outlying rural areas, and I'd always figured that the hickish aspects of the Midwest were exaggerated. Then I met Jeremy's cousins, who were these really nice teenagers (I was 21, they were about 13, 15 and 17) who liked music a lot. What did they like? 311. It was the most radical thing any of them had ever heard--how they combined rock and hip-hop and reggae, that was totally new to them. I didn't freak this time, but it was definitely an eye-opener, and humbling.

How about you guys?

― M Matos (M Matos), Monday, 28 October 2002 07:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Starting college at a Jesuit school in New Orleans at age 17. (I don't know what posessed me to do this -- I wasn't there for very long, though.)

Religion classes were part of our core curriculum. On the first day of the intro class, the teacher passed around a sheet and asked us to write down our names and our religions. When the sheet had finished circulating, he collected it, gave it a cursory glance, and said "I see we have a Jew here!"

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 28 October 2002 07:13 (twenty-three years ago)

But yeah... I got my fill of that place pretty quickly. I don't know whether it was:

*the rampant conservatism and small-mindedness of Southerners (and New Orleans may have a few titty bars and some lenient liquor laws, but it's still the South)

*the palmetto bugs the size of my fist (I'm a little phobic of insects as it is -- I have nightmares about them all the time)

*the drunken fratboy who tried to rape me at a party (my first frat party! awwwww!)

*the feeling of having nothing in common with anyone at all -- philosophically, culturally, ethnically.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Monday, 28 October 2002 07:46 (twenty-three years ago)

I guess the last few months of partying have been a bit of a culture shock, I mean ecstacy itself isn't life changing but going out to parties after gigs where you dance literally all night and drink all day the next day and see people who look worse off than you are seratonin wise, that's a culture shock. Discovering this whole massive underbelly of people who just want to be wasters for a significant percentage of their week, discovering that you're probably still the only one that knows what tune is playing, finding out what it feels like to get the bus home after being out parting for 36 hours, all of it shocks me really.....

― Ronan (Ronan), Monday, 28 October 2002 07:53 (twenty-three years ago)

Ooh, I've got a bunch.

-The awful highways in Canada (there are no shoulders!)
-Slot machines in the Las Vegas airport
-Smoking weed on the street in Berkeley
-New York City as a six-year-old ("why is that man laying face-down in the gutter? Is he dead?")

― Dan I., Monday, 28 October 2002 08:02 (twenty-three years ago)

I spent a few weeks living in a university residence in England. My very first night there, the Duke and Duchess of Rutland came for supper. It was archaic and so exactly like a boarding school movie.

― Miss Laura, Monday, 28 October 2002 10:11 (twenty-three years ago)

Being the Duke of Rutland must be a bit like being King of Lichtenstein but minus the glamour.

My culture shock: watching classism in action at college, hadn't really seen that de-facto coastal approach to social stratification where everyone protests for equality but ignores the cleaners.

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 28 October 2002 11:05 (twenty-three years ago)

going to college and meeting people from North Jersey. they all seemed like a bunch of lower-class bozos.

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 28 October 2002 11:37 (twenty-three years ago)

My mum used to do the heavy work for the old Duchess of Rutland's garden design business (he married twice).

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 28 October 2002 11:43 (twenty-three years ago)

then there's going to law-school in Newark, New Jersey, and encountering hard-core ghetto culture for the first time. i.e., walking past a crackhouse and a homeless shelter on way to class, having homeless people threaten bodily harm because you won't give them a cigarette or a quarter, weekly reports of students being mugged or robbed.

― Tad (llamasfur), Monday, 28 October 2002 11:47 (twenty-three years ago)

After ilx NOTHING shoxs me.

I recently heard a statistic that totally blew me away though - The population of Toronto (the GTA is 4.7 millon now) is more than than the entirety of either Ireland or Norway.

― Kim (Kim), Monday, 28 October 2002 11:59 (twenty-three years ago)

NYC, I must've spent too long in a phone booth because somebody opened the door, physically yanked me out and yelled "This ain't your fuckin' house, asshole!"

― dave q, Monday, 28 October 2002 12:05 (twenty-three years ago)

My European Teen Tour From Hell. But it wasn't Europe that provided the culture shock -- it was the people I toured with. Here were folks who were slated to go to much classier colleges than the ones I wanted to attend, yet even (and especially) the summa cum laudes among them largely acted with the moral sensibilities of ten-year-olds.

"No, the fact that we all have to get out right in the middle of a really primo Grateful Dead tape is not necessarily indicative of rudeness on the bus-driver's part, and perhaps it is not very nice to be rude to the locals, and no, even though I was behind you and looked grumpy, it did not mean I was being grumpy at you (though I am certainly seething at you NOW), oh, and by the way, could you please BATHE?"

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 28 October 2002 12:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Also: going to certain gay bars -- the more "bearish" or Chelsea Droid ones always have and always will give me a sense of culture shock.

"Gee. Thanks. No, really. It's not as if my European Teen Tour From Hell didn't make me feel alienated enough from the people who are THEORETICALLY my peeps...this is the goddamned cherry on the sundae, lemme tell ya."

― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Monday, 28 October 2002 12:46 (twenty-three years ago)

Going to Glasgow for the first time I was asked if I kicked with the left foot?

Are you a tim?

Are you a catholic?

I was uh oh, wtf.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Monday, 28 October 2002 12:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Other people. Still.

― Graham (graham), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Were you raised in a box?

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:35 (twenty-three years ago)

Of sorts.

― Graham (graham), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:42 (twenty-three years ago)

Probably wandering around a hill in Kyoto full of very similar-looking shrines with a couple of friends, desperately trying to find our singing group's tourbus before it ditched us. We saw a kiosk with a map on it and thought we were saved until we got up to it and remembered we couldn't read the characters. (The only character we recognized was the one for shrine, which was all over the map and therefore not helpful. It was also very unsettling because it looks like a backwards swastika.)

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:48 (twenty-three years ago)

it was a good culture shock (not the worst, then): working as a waiter at the v&a museum in london, we had these functions later in the evening, where they opened a section of the museum for private parties/guided visits for clubs formed by old ladies and high society people. there were classical musicians playing in one corner, and we walked among the people filling their glasses with champagne.
it felt like having a part in very old movie.
and the wage was double. i loved it.

― joan vich (joan vich), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:55 (twenty-three years ago)

funnily enough it was coming back back from India, when i was about to tuck into my dinner using my HANDS and realised just in time that this probably wouldn't go down well at the parental dinner table.

― katie (katie), Monday, 28 October 2002 13:57 (twenty-three years ago)

- Being an English student in Ulster, and realising no matter what there would always be a small minority who would hate or distrust you the moment you opened your mouth.

Netherlands.. a selection. Sat in a Rotterdam tram with the bloke next to me smoking heroin/Dutch Mother-in-law enquiring about my sex life/ As a Nursing Assistant being asked by feminist/lesbian colleague if I would spend half an hour with Jan 'reading' one of his soft-porn mags to him.

― stevo (stevo), Monday, 28 October 2002 14:16 (twenty-three years ago)

The only culture shock I can remember experiencing was arriving at university and being forced to share my daily life with a group of unreconstructed lads (US equivalent = jocks, I suppose).

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 28 October 2002 14:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Haha N. thanks for the heads up!

― Mary (Mary), Monday, 28 October 2002 14:49 (twenty-three years ago)

Wha'?

― N. (nickdastoor), Monday, 28 October 2002 14:54 (twenty-three years ago)

Well Nick's is exactly my problem. They all seem be gibbering idiots.

(NB my apologies to teh resat of teh human race, or at least the staff and pupils of Salford University)

― Graham (graham), Monday, 28 October 2002 15:12 (twenty-three years ago)

SHUT UP GRAHAM!

― Graham (graham), Monday, 28 October 2002 15:17 (twenty-three years ago)

Saint Johns- private boys boarding school-jocky and athletic-me small and meek.

― anthony easton (anthony), Monday, 28 October 2002 15:32 (twenty-three years ago)

First time I came back to the States after a year in Germany with no visits back. Everything seemed strange, which I had not expected ("...butbutbut this is HOME!")

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Monday, 28 October 2002 15:38 (twenty-three years ago)

I'm usually either oblivious or just too busy talking with friends. It might also be because I'm so paranoid about being the Ugly American/Typical Tourist that I usually just let whatever happen happens and try to be vaguely unobtrusive about it if it comes up in conversation later.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 28 October 2002 16:32 (twenty-three years ago)

Being 15, playing baseball in the Babe Ruth League World Series, and rolling down a street as the subject of a parade in a small Louisiana town where a parade of 15-year-old baseball players from around the country was a really big-deal highlight. We had wooden tokens and bead necklaces to throw off the float to parade-goers, and people like in their 60s were dancing and screaming alongside the route, cheering us on and maneuvering for souvenirs.

― Andy, Monday, 28 October 2002 16:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Getting off the bus in Tripoli (in Lebanon) and wandering into the souks, and thinking OH MY GOD, GET ME OUT OF HERE.

In retrospect I don't know what so freaked me out about the souks... later in the day I voluntarily went back into them and had an enjoyable time there. But the first sight of the place, with its teeming multitudes and almost stereotypically middle eastern appearence was a bit much for this whitefaced foreign devil.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Monday, 28 October 2002 23:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Not a huge shock, but definitley different in Paisley. A pub, in particular. As soon as I walked in it seemed everything stopped. Was circled around the place and introduced to EVERYONE. Old men couldn't swear in front of me, but they had no problem trying to give little pinches or squeezes. Lots of questions about who/what I was, who was my mother/father, what was their nationality, was I so and so's ex-wife/younger sister?
Also: Seeing smoke in the distance and wondering if there was a fire? But no, just the kids lighting houses on fire, again!

Chicago, where on one street it seems like the scariest place in the world. Huge, abandonned buildings with all the windows gone. Tiny churches with neon-glow crosses every few blocks. Then, a few minutes later you're surrounded by Neiman Marcus/Pottery Barn. The warnings on the radio that killing a construction worker on the highway carries a fine and possible jail sentence. The amount of billboards along the highway, and the religious billboards (Know Jesus, Know Life. No Jesus, No Life.)
Detroit, with the Gun And Knife Show convention alternating with the Comic Book convention. The steaming sewars at night. The endless fried chicken places.

― Genevieve, Tuesday, 29 October 2002 01:37 (twenty-three years ago)

CULTURE SHOCK: A Play in One Act

Bank Manager: "So, yer moving here from Seattle, eh?"
Me: "Yeah, that's right."
Bank Manager: "Well, you're just gonna love it here. This is one of the fastest developing counties in the U.S., you know. Let me tell ya...when I moved here with the wife, back in '92, we had one restaurant here: a Chili's."
Me: "Really."
Bank Manager: "...and I remember saying to myself, "Ya know...Chili's is okay. But we'd REALLY be on the map if we got a RED LOBSTER here."
Me: "Yeah, well...uh.."
Bank Manager: "And now...you fast-forward to 2002, you got your [counting them off on fingers] Chili's, you got your Red Lobster, you got your...TGIF'S
Me: "Do you have a Target's over here?"
Bank Manager: "YEAH! We got those, too!!"

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 01:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Actually, I've never been to a Red Lobster, so maybe the guy's onto something. Are they any good?

― Joe (Joe), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 01:49 (twenty-three years ago)

this is the worst culture shock record
http://www.disclocate.com/images/culutreshock_onwards.jpg

― chaki (chaki), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 01:59 (twenty-three years ago)

Inasmuch as the Olive Garden is good Italian food.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 02:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I miss the Olive Garden. Their food sucked but the bread sticks made it almost worth it.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 02:08 (twenty-three years ago)

Dapto, Wollongong, Australia.

― ***1979*** (***1979***), Tuesday, 29 October 2002 22:11 (twenty-three years ago)

I miss the Olive Garden commercials with the guy with the darting blue eyes saying "IT WAS PERFECT" like it's the most vital thing he's experienced in his life.

― M Matos (M Matos), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 00:34 (twenty-three years ago)

one year passes...

Ants. Little BASTARDS.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 31 October 2003 18:59 (twenty-two years ago)

I love these revived-one-year-later-almost-to-the-day threads.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 31 October 2003 19:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't have the energy for my Budapest public baths story.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Friday, 31 October 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

After three months of living in the mountains on a resort compound, where nature (chipmunks,marrmots,moose,wolf,bears) is your neighbour 24/7 and the the closest person to borrow sugar from is the wardens station 45 min drive away. A co-worker and I decieded when needed a little civilization. So we drove 8 hours to Vancouver. When we drove in to the city we stopped to get coffee, we both looked at each other and said the same thing "I feel like we just fall out of the bush". Which really we had. The shock of it was to much, the smell of the city made us sick, the noise kept us up all night, and not seeing the stars at night had us confused for days. The only things that made it worth it was Mongloian BBQ on Davie street, Death by Chocolate, 30 choices of Beer on tap, men that weren't our co-workers, and the ocean.

Why must I always write novels.

― danielle g. (danielle g.), Saturday, 1 November 2003 04:55 (twenty-two years ago)

My very first time ever out of the country. It was 1992, and I was a 12-year-old who was just getting into Entertainment Weekly and post-1980 pop culture in general. I was a thriving All-American preteen who was obliged to join my mother and my aunt on a driving expedition to the interior of Mexico to visit my paternal grandfather's grave and to interact with a branch of distantly related people whom I was barely knowledgable about. I was so miserably poor with Spanish that I couldn't help but be mute 99% of the time we were there. I took Entertainment Weekly magazines along with me and tried vainly to snatch time away from family get-togethers to read the magazine that would be my reminders of home. I was far too sullen to appreciate the culture and its extremely odd and offbeat nature. I'd like to give it another go sometime soon, now that I've got four years of Spanish lessons under my belt.

― Many Coloured Halo (Dee the Lurker), Saturday, 1 November 2003 05:27 (twenty-two years ago)

movin' to the states - 1998. me 14, VERY unprepared for emigration in general & esp. to america. 1st 6 months were the worst of my life; ended up staying 5 years tho...
am currently experiencing something akin' to cultureshock ( i live in portugal now) tho perhaps i am somewhat better prepared for it. still, that "whoa, I will NOT be able to get by on english anywhere in the world" moment gets to ya no matter how late.

― deathisahedgehog (deathisahedgehog), Saturday, 1 November 2003 06:17 (twenty-two years ago)

returning to the UK after four months in the czech republic.

― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 2 November 2003 00:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Northampton.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 2 November 2003 00:45 (twenty-two years ago)

Not a major shock but kinda disorienting: Dubai airport 1997, flying in at sunrise with a pink glow over the desert and little white huts just like in a movie. The airport itself was full of rather impoverished looking middle eastern people in what amounted to rags, sleeping in piles all over each other on the floor. This contrasted with the obscene wealth of Dubai with its BMWs and gold blingbling on display all over the place. And men armed with AK-47s, patrolling the aiport. I was only there in transit for half a day but it was pretty weird.

― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 2 November 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I guess this is probably too obvious, but lving in Kingston, Jamaica was a pretty huge adjustment for me. Crazy, unbelievable culture shock. I could go on and on, but I don't want to annoy folks here.

― cybele (cybele), Sunday, 2 November 2003 06:19 (twenty-two years ago)

how bout just a paragraph or two then?

― oops (Oops), Sunday, 2 November 2003 08:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I get more culture shock within the united states than without...maybe it's just an expectations game? I've been to Mexico several times, some times to resort towns (Puerto Vallarta, Cancun) and sometimes to border towns (Nogales, Agua Prieta) and even when I was young I knew generally what to expect.

Moving from a small, poor, ranching community in the West to a yuppie-centric college town in the Midwest was a huge shock because it affected my self-identity in weird ways. (the very short version: I thought I was well-off my whole life until I encountered people with levels of privilege that I didn't even have a language for. And I went to a state school; Northwestern was my second choice so I might not have survived that culture shock!)

― teeny (teeny), Sunday, 2 November 2003 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Peckham.

(not really, but it is taking me a little while to get used to it)

Actually, Starry and Alix's old flat in the scariest place I have EVER been, near Loughborough Junction in South London. Fuck.

Also, accidentally driving a 4 wheel tourist bicycle in the left lane in Italy. oops.

― Mark C (Mark C), Sunday, 2 November 2003 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

4 wheel tourist bicycle

It's Sunday for heaven's sake, Mark, stop melting my brane.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Sunday, 2 November 2003 15:31 (twenty-two years ago)

In rough chronological order:

1. Exchanging views of genitalia with a neighborhood girl at age 4-5 with some mutual groping....
2. Having a black girl sit next to me on a school bus when 8 and having all the white kids laugh at me without me knowing what they were laughing at...
3. Having a neighborhood girl discover her father who had hung himself...I couldn't pass the house for weeks!
4. Friends of mine were engaged in a "pay for sex" thing with one of their visiting cousins (younger)....they were all male, including the visiting cousin. I was shocked and thankful not to have been invited to participate. I was 13 at the time.
5. Basic training in 1964 (Ft Knox)...my first real involvement with people of all nationalities, faiths, geographies, etc.
6. My first Army assignment in Korea. Before arriving there by troop ship, we docked for a day in Okinowa. I got my first taste of a truly different culture......and I LOVED it! I later spent time in Thailand, Vietnam, the Phillipines and Japan.

And that ends it at the ripe age of 18...since I'm now 57, I'll quit while I'm ahead. (and I didn't even mention rock n roll in 1954!)

― ed dill (eddill), Sunday, 2 November 2003 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Oops. The thread was "worst cultural shock"....I kinda took it as "biggest".....I mean, e.g., I WAS shocked by the cultural differences in Asia but they surely weren't "worst" by any means....just fascinating.

― ed dill (eddill), Sunday, 2 November 2003 23:10 (twenty-two years ago)

1. Texas
2. MEXICO CITY!

― Francis Watlington (Francis Watlington), Monday, 3 November 2003 01:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Going to Alabama for my cousin's wedding and spending a week with my extremely-religious family there. Yikes.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Monday, 3 November 2003 03:24 (twenty-two years ago)

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