Silence.

I’m from the US (New York for all of my adult life), and it’s loud. On a bus? People are talking. In the grocery store?

People are talking. Standing in a line waiting? People are talking. Here, in Estonia, it’s silent. 75 people on a bus and you can hear a pin drop.

A single line open at the grocery store after work and 30 people waiting? Yup, you got it. Silent. At a shopping mall, mid-December and it’s full of people but all you can hear are footsteps.

I’m not sure I’ll ever get fully used to it. In some ways, it’s nice, but in other ways, it’s very isolating.

Waiters (and service people in general) not being proactive or dropping by just to check on you. Even though I know it’s what I’m supposed to do, I still feel rude having to flag someone down to order or ask for the check.

elijha

I love where I live in France, and I’ve now been here many years. But I get annoyed how hard it is to find info about local cultural events online.

I don’t live in a big city, but I live in a very family-friendly, touristy town, and have to rely on mostly word of mouth or picking up flyers in random places to know what’s going on. It makes it harder to make spontaneous plans, in my opinion.

I’ve never been a US citizen, but I lived there for a long time. When I came back to Europe (my homeland of Poland) I couldn’t get used to that smiling to random people on the street or just casually starting small talks with people is not a thing you do here.

I got many weird stares.

When I studied in Switzerland, the supermarkets closed around 6 every day except when they were closed on Sundays. Since I was often still working on my projects at school and making my way home by the time the shops closed, Saturday was my only shopping day.

If I forgot or was busy during that time period, I would starve until Monday and that was that. No way was I paying 21 francs (over $25 at the time) for a slice of pizza, a coca cola, and some fries at a restaurant.

Everyone eats next to nothing by American standards.

People don’t gorge themselves, so sometimes it was quite daunting to go round someone’s house on the weekend and all they have until supper is tea and a tiny cucumber sandwich.

Or order a coffee and get a tiny espresso. Don’t get me wrong I love these things but I was raised with a scarcity mindset, so I had to unlearn those habits.

As an American living in the UK, I’d say that adjusting to a more reserved way of expressing emotion. I’m used to being very direct and expressive; if I’m feeling angry or happy or sad or excited, you know right away and I’m not at all shy about it, and I’m used to most other people around me being similarly direct and open about what they’re thinking or feeling.

In the UK, I feel like people are a little more indirect and keep their emotions more tamped down. It was especially hard for me to get used to this in a romantic relationship, because for a while I’d perceive my boyfriend’s more reserved manners to mean that he was mad at me or that he didn’t like something I’d bought for him.

Nope, he just isn’t quite as out in the open or intense about his emotions as I tend to be.

I’m also getting used to quietly tutting people who jump the queue or stand on the wrong side of the escalator instead of just straight-up calling them out like I would back home.

Walk left, stand right!

Moved to Prague from Atlanta. Honestly, feeling so free was the hardest.

Safety? I feel safer alone, hammered, on a Friday night at 3am on a dark street than I did in the U.

S. on my couch. Hookers? Legal. Safer and cheaper.

Pot and other stuff? Buy ’em in a bar, police don’t care, it’s a small fine if you’re caught, but they don’t even do that.

Healthcare? $98 bucks a month for 100% coverage. Mental health and previous conditions INCLUDED.

Not needing a car/car insurance/car payment/petrol because Europe actually has functioning Public transport.

Haven’t seen a gun in 2 years.

Despite not speaking the language, people interact with each other more here and you’re much more likely to make friends with a stranger in public and not worry about being cut into pieces.

People take their voting and civil duties much more seriously.

Honestly the hardest thing has been remembering to bring my own bag when I go shopping; everything else has been wonderfully pleasant.

I think because they lost their freedoms for so long under USSR rule, they cling to them and fight for every little thing. Maternity/paternity leave, 6 weeks vacation, mandatory holidays for businesses so workers can have family time.

The tax rate for me is about 13%. Compare that to 34% back home.

Come visit Prague; I’ll show you around.

Last year I spent 9 months in Ukraine.

The women there are always dressed to the nines, even just going grocery shopping. One girl there explained to me that, since clothes are so expensive there (one pair of jeans can be two months salary, easily) the women only buy really nice clothes that will last them.

They don’t buy simple stuff that they can throw on and be casual, so they’re always dressed up even in day to day activities.

Even their casual jeans and t-shirts are still things that I see girls here wear on nights out.

Moved to the U.K. in 2014.

The British are emotionally…different.

Not as gregarious and open as Americans. Being here a while now I’ve learned that once you make a British friend, they’re your friend forever. But for the first year or so it was quite lonely.

I felt like no one liked me which wasn’t the case at all. They just don’t show it and they’re awkward and bone dry all the time. I now love this and have great affection for my adopted countrymen.

I moved to Germany half a dozen years ago. Leipzig specifically. Anyway, one thing is that being nice to strangers is highly frowned upon here.

People in the stores act like they’re furious that you want to buy things from them, a smile and a wave will get you looked at like you’re some kind of creep, and saying something like “hey cool t-shirt” to a woman is akin to propositioning her.

Like, hey lady, calm down, I’m married. I just like that band too.

Anyway, I don’t let that change me, if people wanna think that I’m a weirdo who’s bad at flirting — that’s their problem.

For the most part, I prefer it here though. I definitely feel it’s a better place to raise kids.

It took me a while to grasp the concept of eggs being left outside of the fridge.

Eggs sold in the US go through a washing process, which (if done correctly) makes them less likely to spread salmonella. However, it also removes a natural protective coating, which protects the inside of the egg from bacteria etc so the egg must then be refrigerated.

So the US likes to rely on the washing process, and Europe on the natural coating. Also, in much of Europe, egg-laying hens are vaccinated against salmonella, removing the major incentive for washing eggs.

Celsius instead of Fahrenheit, just doesn’t work in my head. 24-hour clock no problem, metric, yeah all right but Celsius? Just can’t ‘feel’ what 14 degrees is suppose to be.

So the doors don’t open the same.

In the US, the doors almost always open away from you on the inside and you pull from the outside; this is a fire safety regulation.

In the UK at least, it is never consistent and I always open the wrong way.

Also, its a lie that Britain uses metric. They do something worse than metric or imperial.

THEY MIX THEM! It’s so annoying.

School uniforms are a pain and it’s also weird how judgemental people are based on your accent.

In America, you can’t really tell how much money someone makes based on their accent.

In Europe, it’s hard not being able to pet people’s dogs.

People in the states were usually so friendly about it. I’m not saying all Europeans, but the ones I’ve come in contact with look like they are going to knife me if I try to ask to pet their dog.

I’ve been in UK for the last 4 years. People walk everywhere and a lot of people don’t have driver’s licenses, which is weird for me coming from South Carolina and now living in a large city.

The humor is also definitely different — you know, the way people joke.

Like, no one will actually say they’re kidding and I always feel like I have to guess. The sarcasm is strong, so sometimes I’m just not sure. Especially being in Scotland.

Also all the tax being included in the price. You actually pay what the ticketed price is. No more adding extra for each item you put in your shopping basket.

Whaaaaat.

I lived in the UK for a while back in 2008. Mexican food does not (okay, barely) exists. I need me some burritos.

Police where I live don’t carry guns and are, for the most part, way more friendly than their American counterparts.

I actually talked to one of them about not being nervous around them and he said it was because they didn’t carry guns. It’s taken me a while to adjust to this actually, because when I lived in the US and was near cops it would make me nervous as hell even though I didn’t do anything bad.

I’m still a U.S. citizen but I’ve traveled and lived in Europe for work for a lot of my professional career. So I hope I qualify.

One of the more difficult cultural quirks was having to sit at a table with strangers when going out to eat. I worked in Germany for 6 months a few years ago and, while it makes sense from an efficiency standpoint, it’s super awkward when your not a social butterfly.

Also, the prevalent use of ‘partner’ when referring to your opposite-sex significant others. It took me a while to stop assuming they’re in a same-sex relationship.

Funny enough, I now mostly use partner to refer to my girlfriend now that I’m back stateside and I get people making the same assumption about me.

I studied abroad in London during college. The first day in the country, I was almost hit by a car because the cars there are on the other side of the road.

Also, as a Bostonian, I’m used to jaywalking, so that didn’t help, either. Took me a while to get used to figuring out the way to get a on a bus, too.

I moved to Italy, Sicily to be exact, and it was hard for me. I liked the area and my in-laws a lot, but I was not used to the slow-paced environment that came with it.

I’m from the South and it’s slow down there, but somehow Sicily was even slower. The massive number of holidays where everything is closed make it hard to live.

The fact that everything closes at 1pm to 4pm was hard too.

Electricity was expensive and you couldn’t store the energy from your solar panels, so even if you had air conditioning you didn’t run it much because of the cost.

Hospitals sucked (my kid was born there) and the job market did too. A good paying job in Sicily at that time was €800 ($896 US) a month, but most of the jobs were €450 a month, and they paid you in cash too. You just can’t raise a family on those wages.

When I was in England back in the mid 2000s, I was starving. Went into a Subway and asked for a footlong. The employee just gave me this giant “what in the world are you talking about” stare.

I looked up at the menu and the only thing listed was 6 inch subs.

Finally, as she put it all together she asked, “So you want two”? The she proceeded to cut the full bread in half and build two of the same sandwiches separately.

That is when I realized Americans might have a problem.

My wife moved to Finland so we could live together — a reasonable improvement over having an entire ocean between us.

Here’s just some things she had to adjust to:

Fast food portions: American portions are ridiculous. For what you pay for a potato field worth of fries, you get a medium here.

Large fries in a Finnish McD are on par with small in the U.S.

Obedience to traffic lights. Even when the road is clear, Finns will mostly still wait for the light to turn green.

Public drinking. While technically not legal, police (and other people) don’t really care if you behave yourself. Parks are filled to the brim with people drinking in the summer.

You can walk out of a store, pop open a cold one and sit in front of the store drinking it. We were caught by a small summer raincloud and downed a bottle of white wine right there by the bike racks while we waited for the rain to clear.

Public Transport. It’s everywhere, it’s efficient, it’s reliable. I’ve lived in two cities, I’ve never felt the need to buy myself a car.

Wife doesn’t have a car. We live about 5km away from downtown, and it takes us 15 minutes to get there during the day, 30 tops any time of the night.

Makeup. People don’t use it nearly as much. Natural blemish hiding and subdued highlighting is common, but anything beyond that, you just don’t see on other people besides 18-20 year olds who have just moved away from home to a new city and are going out to party.

Security. She’s never seen a cop ticket anyone here. She doesn’t flinch or feel unsafe anymore when she sees a cop, because cop salaries aren’t predicated on them ticketing people as much.

On the flip side, we’ve even walked through the roughest neighborhoods during the small hours of the morning and didn’t feel like it’s a place we shouldn’t be.

She can take a bus or the train whenever, to wherever, and never think twice.

Healthcare. She was reluctant to get to the hospital when she discovered my knives are sharp and cut her pinky TO THE BONE.

She was so reluctant because it would’ve been a month’s salary down the drain in the states. Here, for a foreigner at the time, with no insurance, a doctor stitching up her finger cost under $200.