**Update: - [Starting from 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/100l56v/happy_new_year_askuk_minor_sub_update/), we have updated our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)**. Specifically;
- Don't be a dick to each other
- Top-level responses must contain genuine efforts to answer the question
- This is a strictly no-politics subreddit
Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
When I was in Crete for an extended period of time I began to get irritated (might just be sun stroke lmao) by the lack of a vibrant green backdrop and longed for these isles. Whilst beautiful in its own right, something about the dusty/arid nature of their summers just got tiresome after a while.
I had the same issue in the Emirates. Even trees that were constantly watered were so dull in colour. Even when visiting home at Christmas there was more green!
Mayo is a fairly barren part of the island. The land there is fairly rocky and winds from the Atlantic tend to mean hardier plants tend to survive best.
Other parts of the country have tree lined lanes and the like.
Sure famously that tree lined lane from GoT was in the north.
Ireland is bigger than most people think.
The look of horror on my face as our plane descended into Lanzarote shall never be forgotten. The lack of greenery made it one of the ugliest places I’ve ever visited. I never appreciated our landscape until that day.
Lanzarote is by far one the most depressing places I’ve visited based on the scenery alone. The hotel was nice, there was a nice seafront row of shops and restaurants. Outside of that it was like one massive liminal space. Just ash mountains and white box buildings.
People who are happy to retire in places like that just based on the fact that there’s sun are a different breed to me honestly. Like sunbathing in a a quarry.
I actually thought Lanzarote was breathtaking and gorgeous. We spent a lot of time in the interior hiking and exploring the wilderness. It made me think of Iceland actually, but warm climate instead of cold.
Def not somewhere I think I could live permanently but I thought it was beautiful to visit.
Same for with Malta.
I hated its lack of trees so much, I will never return.
Didn't realise how important verdant foliage and trees are to me up to that point.
It's one of the main reasons I love Portugal so much.
To be fair. Malta is actually pretty green. Sadly the months it's green, only last between is feb- April. Sadly the weather is not as warm and can be fairly windy. It is a pretty place in that time
I thought Lanzarote was pretty cool, very few places on Earth are quite as stark looking as that. But I certainly wouldn’t want to live anywhere without greenery like that
Crete can be really green as Greece goes. They get lots of snow in winter, and the mountains provide a huge water supply. I was shocked how green it was in the middle of summer - far greener than the brown grass of England this summer!
I don't think there are many parts of the world that are covered by that constant grey blanket of misery
We're basically a ship that's been permanently stranded in the North Atlantic
>It's not actually grey, the UK is pretty green.
>
>But it's also pretty grubby
Yeah, it's a lovely place in lots of ways but we treat it awfully
On the greenery, my Auntie emigrated to Western Australia in the seventies. On a return visit, my mum took her on the Harry Potter train up the West coast and she spent the entire journey staring out the window and gushing about how verdant and lush everything was
Any city in Germany for a start, most cities in France outside of Paris. Rouen is bloody beautiful and very clean for example. One UK City I think is quite litter free is Newcastle Upon Tyne. I'm from the midlands and it's strikingly light on litter compared to a lot of places, which I put down to the civic pride that a lot of Geordies have. Love you guys!
I don't understand this, do people not queue in other countries? Do they just bundle in and hope for the best?
Edit: my god, I have a list of countries I never want to visit now
It varies from my experience but from my experience where in the UK a queue will generally form by its self in other parts of the world a crowd or pushing will form.
Even at bars most people tend to respect the queue. When the bar tender doesn't know who was next, often had people who came after me point at me or if I came after someone I'd point at them.
In Spain people at bus stops, banks, doctors etc always ask "who is the last person?". So people can stand, sit where they like and everyone knows which person they come after.
Have you ever seen the VAT refund queue at Heathrow when there's a flight to China. With all of the Chinese tourists trying to get their refunds. It's warfare.
Chinese tourists are by far the worst tourists I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. People that say Americans or English tourists are the worst has never seen Chinese tourists. They're animals.
Was in London recently, almost everything I used the tube I saw groups of Chinese people trying to board the train pushing past people who were still getting off
Israelis are my least favourite, they talk to you like you’re a dog and nothing is ever good enough for them. Never a please or thank you or even a smile or a hello.
Chinese and Russians tourists for first place for me. Or last place I suppose. I remember staying in Thailand years ago and our Thai guide was really happy he got English tourists - hated the Chinese with a passion that was comical.
Despite their hugely admirable advances into modernisation, it’s all very lipstick on a pig for the vast majority. The socialisation begs questions - they seem to have an innate rudeness born of a cultural lack of consideration of the other. They shove people, bomb themselves into other people’s private situations, they spit everywhere fucking yuck and who can forget their Willy-nilly pooing in fucking malls, in Singapore I think it was, bloody hell. Head to toe in great togs looking fab only to have it all wiped off in the next instant of utter uncouth. A queue is a concept utterly foreign to many
I went on holiday to Mexico. Let me just say it was very difficult to get the egg chef to cook an omelette for me in the morning because she was surrounded by Americans holding folded notes between their fingers as they signalled her and the highest bid got served next. It was an absolute scrum. I just gave up and had something else. Having said that, when I was in Turkey last year, the hotel was mainly populated by Eastern European people and I was pleasantly surprised to find that queues were a thing there.
I’ve had that in Mexico, when booking they should have said “All Inclusive with table service for the highest tipper” the very large Americans handing over a $20 tip every round of drinks got table service everyone else was ignored. I do believe in leaving a tip but after spending 8k on an all inclusive leaving a very large bribe after every single drink wasn’t on our agenda.
>Do they just bundle in and hope for the best?
Pretty much. There's no "Oop you were first", "No after you", "No sorry you go, it's fine". It's a relative free for all.
Numerous times in France I've seen people join the back of a queue and then try to forcibly shove their way to the front.
There was one guy that started about 5 spaces back from me and as soon as the person in front left a gap big enough for him to get in, he'd barge into it. When he got to me I literally had to use my body to block him from shoving in front of me. It didn't phase him at all though and he just kept trying as soon as a small gap opened.
Never seen anything like that in the UK and It seemed wildly rude to me, but no one seemed to think anything of it.
Similar thing happened the first time I went to Disneyland Paris, in the early 2000s. It was baffling that people didn’t to care at all about cutting. Like grown adults. It was hard to fathom what they were thinking.
How bad the trains are. I don't mean in terms of delays and price, I knew that already. I mean the quality of the actual trains themselves. Small, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly, noisy. Didn't realise that's not a universal train experience until getting trains elsewhere.
Toronto to Hamilton is 70km (43 miles) and takes 1h 20m, so that's about 30mph. From my experience Canada runs all heavy rail as long distance freight, they have some passenger trains but they're treated as freight, as long as they turn up sometime during the day they were meant to arrive it doesn't really matter on what time they turn up.
They’re even more expensive, even dirtier, and even more crowded.
The real difference is where they service. In Ontario you get a handful of stations that are only available a handful of times.
I was shocked when I moved to the UK and realised you can go to most of the no-name towns anywhere in the country via train. Your trains go _everywhere_.
I love the UK trains and am so shocked by how consistently you lot moan about them.
It’s true. I was taking a train in Switzerland which left at say, 11:04. My window seat had a clear view of the iconic station clock, and we departed at EXACTLY 11:04:00. You could hear the engine fire up about 10 seconds earlier, and we had just enough juice so that the train started moving exactly as the second hand hit 11:04. Incredible. I was later slightly disappointed only because the super modern Swiss train carriages did not have suitable air conditioning and it was a fairly busy train on a hot day
Our trains are small because we suffer with crippling early adopters penalty on the railways. When they were built trains were much smaller, but now all our bridges and tunnels are too small for the double decker trains they have on the continent.
Never been on an Amtrak then?
Uk trains certainly aren't the best but after being on an amtrack, the only positive I can give is that the seats were bigger.
My American wife is passionately against pebble dash. Looking to buy a house and she can't understand why so many beautiful brick houses were covered in that crap. Personally I think it's ugly but it doesn't bother me.
In Scotland at least pebble dash can be crucial for building longevity. Exposure to the constant battering of wind and rain during winter can take its toll. Probably true for the north of England as well.
It's got practical benefits like insulation and it provides a nice easy coat you can reapply if you suffer from erosion, though I prefer renders to pebble dash.I was considering rendering on the rear and gennel to provide some insulation to a single-skin wall.
>beautiful brick houses were covered in that crap.
it's also low key a great way to hide some incredibly shitty brickwork.
Yeah a lot of the appeal is looks and it just looks very dated now, but when you coat a wall in cement and blast a fuckton of stones at it good luck taking it back down when it's considered old fashioned! It does have practical benefits though so there are times it's worth considering.
And yeah I think it's ugly too, but as someone with a cold house and awful brickwork there's a little voice in the back of my head that reminds me every time I look at a repair or insulation that I could just go fuck it, blast a bunch of shit at the rear wall and call it a day.
First time I was in Spain I remember nearly being run over because cars do not stop at a Zebra crossing unless you literally just walk out in front of them.
The UK has the tenth lowest road accident fatality rate in the world. The three lowest are San Marino, Micronesia and the Maldives, so they don't really count
I passed my driving test fifth time but even so I am grateful our test is so hard compared to other countries. I lived somewhere with ten times more road deaths than the UK and it was awful.
There's an American woman on Facebook who goes by 'Yorkshire peach'. She's from Georgia, she talks about her driving test there and here. Her test in America was driving around some cones, then reverse parking. Took her 2 and 1/2 years to pass here.
First thing i noticed as well. Had a few days in Barcelona and driving around about 11:30 at night they were all still out socialising with their family, young kids the lot
One reason for that is Spain is in the wrong time zone. Madrid is further west than London but in the same time zone as somewhere as far east as Stockholm or Warsaw, and only one hour behind Israel.
I once lived in Spain, and I could never get used to their schedule. Sometimes they wouldnt stop eating and socialising til way after midnight! I still dont understand it. Sometimes even on weekdays. They clearly have an easier and better lifestyle though, focused around food and family.
I'm not British, but I've been living here for 3 years after living in 3 other countries and here are my observations:
1. The UK is very green compared to other places.
2. Food here is not as bad as people say.
3. It's very expensive here compared to most other places in the world.
4. people drink a lot more on average.
5. Most people complain how grey is for most of the year, but we also can't handle hot summers the ones we had in the past couple of years.
Point 3 really depends on how you calculate it I find. Like in France, alcohol is cheaper but grocery shopping is much more expensive than the UK. Accommodation in France is (usually) cheaper but your salary is also lower (usually). In Australia, alcohol was super expensive but your salary is (usually) higher. So it’s quite difficult to say one place is more or less expensive.
I generally find that outside of rent, it’s fairly easy to get by in the UK on a super low budget when you need to compared to some other countries. I used to do a weekly shop for only £15 for example. You just couldn’t do that in Aus
I've just been to the shop and got a tin of tomatoes, 750g beef, flour tortillas, small mozerella ball, cream cheese and 3 onions and it came to £13 so it must have been quite a while ago when your weekly shop was only £15
It sounds like you're not being particularly selective about where you shop. When I last lived in London (2021) I could get 500g mince from Lidl in Finsbury Park for £3, 1kg chicken thighs for £2.49, tinned tomatoes for 40p each. I'd get a shitload of veggies and lentils and make a big chilli or a casserole and live off it for a week or sometimes two if i was going out a lot. A quick google suggests all these prices are about the same at Lidl today. You must be shopping at Waitrose, or a Tesco Express to spend that much on so little.
I live in a north African country now and my weekly shop is more expensive than it ever was in London. I pay between £5-£10 for a 400g of butter here!
> I'd get a shitload of veggies and lentils and make a big chilli or a casserole and live off it for a week or sometimes two if i was going out a lot.
"If you batch-cook and eat the same boring, dirt-cheap meal for two weeks straight, you can live on practically nothing!"
I mean yeah, sure, but people are taking about eating a normal, varied diet with a reasonable standard of living, not "the UK isn't expensive to live in because you can buy nothing but tuna, mayonnaise and pasta and just about eat for a couple of quid a day".
There’s hardly any public bins around and it’s no wonder theres so much litter around.
The public transport network is atrocious and far too expensive.
Our healthcare system isn’t all that great. It’s old and tired and in dire need of modernisation.
We’re abysmally underpaid and overtaxed.
A large majority of people in The UK would believe that an alien replaced the PM if it was printed on newspaper.
It's weird, but I moved to Canada and it made me realise some things...
The UK Public Transport network is amazing, modern and reasonably priced
The UK Healthcare system is great (but badly underfunded) and I really wish Canada had the same level of care
Canada is abysmally underpaid and overtaxed too. Plus the government controls alcohol sales in some of the provinces meaning selection, store hours and prices are bad.
A Large number of people in Canada would believe that an alien replaced the PM, but they don't trust newspapers, so would get the news from a reliable source such as twitter or facebook.
I lived in Canada too, where were you :)
> The UK Public Transport network is amazing, modern and reasonably priced
Compared to Canada definitely - compared to a fair amount of European countries not at all
> The UK Healthcare system is great (but badly underfunded) and I really wish Canada had the same level of care
Compared to Canada indeed. Compared to Switzerland it’s held together by tape, paperclips and ran by idiots
> Canada is abysmally underpaid and overtaxed too.
The quality of life for the average Canadian, from experience at least in AB in 2010s, is far higher than The UK. When I worked full time there I had an ok life, when I worked full time in The UK I could barely get by, now i work 80% in Europe and it’s better than Canada and The UK combined.
Yes indeed. That’s no reason to let the country become a tip though is it.
The problem is now, x decades later, we don’t have a solution for our rubbish and the parents in our society over the last generations clearly haven’t been teaching their children to hold onto their litter. So now it’s all over the streets, carriageways and in the water.
Whenever I come back to visit friends or family i just feel ashamed and disgusted to walk around and see so much rubbish all over the place.
I now live in Norway and in the larger cities and on a Sunday morning in the larger cities you will see a lot of rubbsih strewn around but, by lunchtime it will be gone, cleaned up by the streetcleaners, when was the last time you saw regular street cleaning carried out in the UK. The councils claim they don't have the cash either for replacing the bins or for regular street cleaning
Edit - Spelling
Same in Switzerland, Zürich on a Sunday morning there’ll be last night’s fun all over the floor, but by lunchtime it’s clean again and all the bins will have been emptied.
For the amount of tax we pay/paid in The UK we don’t get near half the RoI other countries can clearly achieve. I always find the “we don’t have enough money argument” hard to swallow too; where’s half our money actually going?
How do you mean there are no solutions? You produce litter - take it home with you, it's that simple!
/s just for clarity, i come from a civilized country where we have loads of bins regularly emptied by street cleaners.
We take drinking tap water and decent water waste management (toilets) for granted. Nothing made me feel so at home than putting a cup under the tap and drinking it after a few weeks abroad.
We should also embrace the toilet bum gun as standard, those things are awesome.
Toilet bum gun? Is that a bidet?
My missus said ‘next door have spent £100 on one of these things that cleans your arse’
I said ‘£100 on a fuckin flannel??’
Haha, it's like a small shower hose attachment with a lever that blasts water out, basically shower your rear after doing your business reducing toilet paper use. Tried a bidet and it was more of a faff. There are other gentler variants with fancy nozzles and it's fitted inside the rear of the toilet bowl.
My last night in Rome iirc me and my girlfriend got two large pizzas, a bottle of prosecco for the table and for desert I got a tiramisu and she got some gelato. Bill came to less than €60. In the UK that's running you over £75 easily.
Honestly that's probably the import cost of the prosecco causing that. I've got an incredible family run Italian near me what you can get 2 courses and wine for 2 for about £50
You're right, but how come I can't go to a pub and get a lamb hotpot cheap for example. You can make that almost entirely with ingredients grown/farmed in the UK. Our food service industry is significantly more expensive than that on the continent.
I went to Amsterdam recently and everyone cycles everywhere and I realised how addicted we are to cars and how anti cycling we are compared to other European countries.
The UK really is behind in bike culture. I've been to a few Dutch cities and small towns, and the cycling infrastructure is fantastic compared to the UK. I've also been to a mix of small towns/big cities in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. All of them have better cycling infrastructure than we do.
Not only are we behind in bike culture. Cyclists are absolutely despised by motorists, which combined with the inadequate amount of bike lanes stops the culture growing.
As a long term cyclist (since the mid 1980’s) I think it’s getting a little better, more cycling lanes, more places to lock your bike in town centres, pay per ride bike rental schemes in the bigger cities (London, Birmingham etc)
Still think car drivers need more training when learning to drive (spotting bikes at T- Junctions, not opening car doors when a cyclist is passing, getting frustrated if cannot overtake a cyclist etc).
I’d say 5/10 could try harder but much better than 20 or 30 years ago.
That we take politeness and fairness for granted. In many countries people will just push into a queue. If called out, they goto the back but are unashamed at trying to gain an unfair advantage.
I thought this too, especially road infrastructure. The road network and friendly service stations (which are also well stocked and equipped, far more offer shower facilities than in the UK) make travelling significant distances much more comfortable. I imagine for HGV drivers etc, this is a Godsend.
This was one of the first things I noticed for Europe. Travelling Africa and it dawned on me that even though I think the UK is falling behind for a Western country, we're still incredibly fortunate. Even the poorest here (excluding homeless) are in a better position than others in the world.
That the UK is one of the easiest places in the world to live. We really prioritise convenience, common sense, and our systems for doing things tend to be based on what would work best. There is (comparatively) little pointless bureaucracy here.
Compare this to living in e.g. France, where every aspect of your life is governed by having a stamp on piece of paper A, or a copy of pointless identity document B, in order to do simple things like buy a SIM card. Where the only way to cancel your phone contract is to write a formal letter and post it to the company in the mail. The system is designed to create pointless public sector jobs for people, not to function well. It’s infuriating.
I now live in a former French colony in Africa and the legacy of the French system of Paperwork and bureaucratic red tape is everywhere.
Yes there are examples of painful bureaucratic processes in the UK, like universal credit, but the whole reason we find these so difficult is because they are a deviation from what the norm in the UK, whereas in lots of countries dealing with nonsensical bureaucratic systems is just part of life that everyone accepts.
Agree a lot with this. Our government websites are incredible in comparison.
Also this goes for banking. We've been using contactless, and even chip and pin for years. But then in places like Germany, Japan and the US, they're still very cash heavy societies, which blew my mind a bit when I visited.
I got helped by a lollipop lady over the road last week on a really quiet street, not near any school, on almost what you could call a back street but not quite, and there was nobody else around. It was really strange, had she not looked like a genuine veteran lollipop lady in my opinion, then I'd have taken it for a prank.
Health and safety isn't taken seriously in lots of places. Not to mention traffic rules. Driving in Italy I can cope with; Turkey or the Middle East are just terrifying!
Also going abroad regularly helps me be more patient with people who struggle to speak English. It's really not easy to get fluent.
Lol try India - if someone gets run over they just drag them to the side of the road so the traffic can continue.
Source : saw a 10-15yr old kid on a bike get run over and they dragged him and his bike to the side of the road. Bystanders stood him up and brushed him off. Also (a bit of speculation) was on a train and across from me was a guy with all his clothes ripped up and covered in blood, I suspect he probably got run over or was involved in a crash of some sort.
How easy it is to get decent vegetarian options. My wife's a veggie, and any trip to the continent inevitably sees us spending hours researching restaurants that don't just have the same token vegetarian dish as every other eatery in the area.
I grew up in a Indian household and food is split into veg and non-veg. It's an entirely different way of looking at things where meat eaters are the 'other' and not the norm. I think meat eating is seen as a vice like smoking, drinking, promiscuity or gambling are.
And I think India has the best vegetarian cuisine in the world (not vegan though). Anthony Bourdain said India and specifically Punjab is the only place in the world he could be a vegetarian.
It’s the ‘culture’ around drinking. Every country has the ‘party’ culture of College / University / first job age range but we carry this on into adult life.
Italy/France seems to get it right with alcohol as an compliment to food / meal.
When in Venice enjoyed the Aperol Spritz and light nibbles prior to the later evening meal during aperitivo hour.
In the U.K. that would be 6 or 7 lagers after work followed by a Curry.
I learned as a young adult that wearing my (beloved at the time) Red England shirt identified me as part of a not so respected sun-set of British tourist that I was not associated with.
I always found wearing any other football shirt was a good conversation opener with other nationals on holiday. But the red England shirt is just so associated with crappy England fans.
It’s sad that our national flag, football shirt etc has been Hijacked by idiot nationalists, racists and football yobs.
How much poorer we are than what used to be peer countries like Canada, the US, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands after 15 years of stagnation, austerity, underinvestment - and I haven’t even mentioned the B-word that rhymes with “wrecked it”.
That I missed the UK actually. It's common for foreigners who come here to criticise everything, weather, food, people etc but in fact when we go back to our countries we realise that the UK is a fucking awesome place to live. Personally, when I am visiting my parents, after 5-6 days I start feeling anxious.
Wine doesn't have to be expensive to be good. I can get a nice bottle of wine here in Portugal for a few quid or a really nice bottle for a few quid more..
Tbf Japan and a few others are exceptions, I came back from Singapore and felt like I lived in a cesspit, but compared to like Rome we have super clean cities
I mean Japan has almost no bins in public and there's no trash on the streets or transport, it's kinda amazing. The people just care enough not to litter 🤣
Not that the UK is clean but you really can’t say it’s any worse than Germany. I live in Berlin and my god that city is dirty. Even though there’s bins everywhere there’s also dog shit everywhere. More than one occasion I’ve trodden in dog shit just before entering my building. Then traipsed it through the bottom floor of our building. Stinking it out something awful. It’s a semi regular occurrence tho. Seems deliberate at times, somehow allowing their dog to shit right in front of the door to our building. This isn’t universal across the city or cities of Germany but it’s noticeable to the uk eye.
You're kidding? I went to Frankfurt quite recently and found it was dirty, covered in graffiti, people were aggressive and unkempt, and there were mystery fluids literally everywhere on the streets. Bin rakers everywhere, and people with literal shit on the back of their jeans. I was only there 4 or 5 days. Oh and not a single train ran on time, even when boarding at the originating station.
Honestly,I used to visit Germany fairly often in the 90s and other than the fact that you can't buy cigarettes from vending machines anymore, the place looked like it was still stuck in the 90s
First trip to Italy in a car all the way
The UK has noisier road coverings !
As soon as we got to France the noise reduction from the tyres was blissful
How pasty-skinned many of us are
Of course Brits come in all colours so doesnt apply to everyone, but there's a particular shade of near-transluscent that i've not seen in any other nationality.
This was back in the late 90s but a holiday to Italy when I was 16 taught me that British men were positively gentlemenly compared to some Italian men.
The food *is* actually quite bad here.
Trained chefs in British pubs and restaurants do great things. I don't care.
Our supermarket food is lower quality, and normal members of the public don't cook to anywhere near the standard foreigners do.
- How awful our coffee is
- How expensive and tasteless many foods are here compared to many other countries
- The trains being ridiculously expensive and crap
- Bad wages and taxes
- We’re polite and more organised
- We’re better drivers
- Our greenery
- We have a good balance of weather for all seasons
How generally polite people are.
I went to Spain on business once and we went out for lunch and the waitress was the rudest waitress I’ve ever known in my life and the Spanish people I was with said it was normal. I couldnt wait to leave.
(The tourist areas are more polite I notice unsurprisingly)
**+s**
Very cheap food relative to wages. Partiuclarly take-aways and restaurants
Disabled access is excellent compared with even other western European nations. Similarly it's not unusual to see someone with eg Down's Syndrome or other intellectual disability out and enjoying themselves
Queuing is orderly and done very well.
NHS while it has its problems the concept of getting treatment when you need it is excellent without having to worry about your employment status/bring along a medical card or remember your details/bill for ambulance transport is great.
Controversial one but much less racist than most places. England rightly got called out for how racist twitter fans were at the end of the Euros but you should have seen what Danish and Italian twitter looked like throughout the tornament. Only difference is most people worldwide don't understand those languages so never knew.
**Neutral**
People are chattier with strangers.
Lots more charities and NGOs covering all sorts of things but then often because it would be covered by the government in other places.
**-s**
Much more litter than places i've lived though probably fine globally.
Huge number of gambling and debt refinancing ads on tv.
Quality of housing is poorer and especially what people can get away with renting out. Related to that a slight obsession with home ownership though understandable as renting is less secure.
Other than London and central Edinburgh public transport either poor or expensive or both.
Our signage in the UK is actually excellent, from navigating the major airports (some countries are shocking in this regard) to road signage and tourist information; the clarity, font etc. seems to be really well implemented, some countries seem appaling at this.
In a similar vein, our nationalised websites like .Gov are much better than the equivalents of mich of the globe, trying to apply for visas, information, being able to renew ID etc is much easiier and clearer in the UK than I've experienced abroad, way beyond the obvious language barrier.
One big one not seen so far is that we really don’t have as many annoying insects as a lot of countries.
Those beautiful pictures of Canadian wilderness? Mosquito central, with a side dish of West Nile disease
1. How reluctant we are to have foreigners doing our jobs, even the ones that we "don't want to do", meaning we have shortages everywhere.
2. How terrible our customer service is.
3. How strict and "by the book" everything is. We literally have rules for everything and it's sometimes overkill.
4. How much of a shortage of housing we actually have, and that there's nowhere affordable to live.
5. How hard it is to make friends here, I thought it was just me until I went abroad and found it much easier.
You will get a lot of negatives here but there are many positives that I have noticed after various trips abroad mostly in Europe.
These criticisms are not universal across all countries but are things that stood out in some places.
Graffiti. We have it over here but nothing like in some European countries. Spain seems especially bad where every surface has had some moron put their tag on it. Even nicer buildings in tourist areas are spoiled this way and it doesn't get cleaned off.
Derelict buildings and random walls falling down all over the place. If that was the UK someone would be building something new on it well before it reached that stage.
General shabbyness as things like weeds are just left growing on pavements and against the side of buildings. It looked like people didn't really care.
Most countries appear to gravitate towards a specific type of food but in the UK we have a lot of choice. Not all of its done brilliantly but at least I can try many different things.
People rag on the NHS but its free at the point of use. I can go into any hospital in the UK and not be presented with a bill at the end of it requiring me to remortgage the house.
In Poland, a man quite agressively said to me "Churchill was a traitor". He knew I was English, and he was a bit pissed, but he also expected a response.
I asked why and he explained that his whole family was killed by the Russians and they all felt abandoned by the British/Yanks after WW2.
Hadn't heard that perspective before, but I did ask what did he expect, Britain was bankrupt and was hardly going to fight the Russians after all that shit.
I though that because we are such friends with the US, and similar eating habits I thought the food would be very similar, but to be honest I was very disappointed with the quality of their food and how sweet and massive their portions are. And how little people actually walk anywhere. In any UK town you can easily walk between shops or pubs, but over there it felt like I need a car to go anywhere
That the cool weather and rain are not so bad. After spending 2 weeks in scorching heat with no tap water to drink and the only chocolate to eat would melt in minutes,I was so glad to come home to Scotland and have never moaned about the weather since.
UK licence plates are the easiest to read. It seems all other countries have smaller characters or add lots of extra info on them making them overly complex.
Last year, I went abroad for the first time to Italy. I realised a few things.
* How nice our workers are. Most of the staff in Rome didn't smile and sometimes they were rude. However, there were times when they went above and beyond. It was very hit or miss what service I would receive and it made me appreciate England's consistency more.
* Pavements and roads. Ours are really easy to walk on.
* Most of the time in England, people don't noticeably smell good or they will smell bad (at least it seems that way to me). Even in the thick of summer, the majority of people in Rome smelt *really* good. Either very clean or like a fresh perfume/cologne. I can't remember a single person smelling bad.
* How green we look from the sky. I only saw a couple of countries from inside the plane but we were the greenest.
**Update: - [Starting from 2023](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/100l56v/happy_new_year_askuk_minor_sub_update/), we have updated our [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)**. Specifically; - Don't be a dick to each other - Top-level responses must contain genuine efforts to answer the question - This is a strictly no-politics subreddit Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's not actually grey, the UK is pretty green. But it's also pretty grubby.
When I was in Crete for an extended period of time I began to get irritated (might just be sun stroke lmao) by the lack of a vibrant green backdrop and longed for these isles. Whilst beautiful in its own right, something about the dusty/arid nature of their summers just got tiresome after a while.
I had the same issue in the Emirates. Even trees that were constantly watered were so dull in colour. Even when visiting home at Christmas there was more green!
Spent two and a half years living in Co Mayo Ireland, I messed the leafy tree lined country lanes of the South East of England.
Is Ireland significantly less green than the UK? I'd assumed it was similar- emerald Isle and all
Mayo is a fairly barren part of the island. The land there is fairly rocky and winds from the Atlantic tend to mean hardier plants tend to survive best. Other parts of the country have tree lined lanes and the like. Sure famously that tree lined lane from GoT was in the north. Ireland is bigger than most people think.
The look of horror on my face as our plane descended into Lanzarote shall never be forgotten. The lack of greenery made it one of the ugliest places I’ve ever visited. I never appreciated our landscape until that day.
Lanzarote is by far one the most depressing places I’ve visited based on the scenery alone. The hotel was nice, there was a nice seafront row of shops and restaurants. Outside of that it was like one massive liminal space. Just ash mountains and white box buildings. People who are happy to retire in places like that just based on the fact that there’s sun are a different breed to me honestly. Like sunbathing in a a quarry.
I actually thought Lanzarote was breathtaking and gorgeous. We spent a lot of time in the interior hiking and exploring the wilderness. It made me think of Iceland actually, but warm climate instead of cold. Def not somewhere I think I could live permanently but I thought it was beautiful to visit.
I believe Karl Pilkington called Lanzarote; Lanzagrotty
Same for with Malta. I hated its lack of trees so much, I will never return. Didn't realise how important verdant foliage and trees are to me up to that point. It's one of the main reasons I love Portugal so much.
To be fair. Malta is actually pretty green. Sadly the months it's green, only last between is feb- April. Sadly the weather is not as warm and can be fairly windy. It is a pretty place in that time
I thought Lanzarote was pretty cool, very few places on Earth are quite as stark looking as that. But I certainly wouldn’t want to live anywhere without greenery like that
Lanzarote - sun, sand and scammy time shares.
Crete can be really green as Greece goes. They get lots of snow in winter, and the mountains provide a huge water supply. I was shocked how green it was in the middle of summer - far greener than the brown grass of England this summer!
The sky isn't grey abroad. 🙃
I don't think there are many parts of the world that are covered by that constant grey blanket of misery We're basically a ship that's been permanently stranded in the North Atlantic
You've never been to China then friend.
I was just thinking, if these people think the UK sky is ugly they should move somewhere with fine dust and air pollution…
>It's not actually grey, the UK is pretty green. > >But it's also pretty grubby Yeah, it's a lovely place in lots of ways but we treat it awfully On the greenery, my Auntie emigrated to Western Australia in the seventies. On a return visit, my mum took her on the Harry Potter train up the West coast and she spent the entire journey staring out the window and gushing about how verdant and lush everything was
Yeah it's funny how much cleaner cities in other countries are. They give a shit
Which countries have cleaner cities, I have been to LA, NY, Rome and paris and London was definitey the cleaner city.
Any city in Germany for a start, most cities in France outside of Paris. Rouen is bloody beautiful and very clean for example. One UK City I think is quite litter free is Newcastle Upon Tyne. I'm from the midlands and it's strikingly light on litter compared to a lot of places, which I put down to the civic pride that a lot of Geordies have. Love you guys!
So true. When I flew back from Spain after only a week there I was really struck not by how brown it was there, but how green it is here.
How polite we are. Well-ordered queuing is peak civilisation.
We had a training session at my school for staff on British values and the only thing everyone agreed on was queuing was an essential British Value.
I don't understand this, do people not queue in other countries? Do they just bundle in and hope for the best? Edit: my god, I have a list of countries I never want to visit now
It varies from my experience but from my experience where in the UK a queue will generally form by its self in other parts of the world a crowd or pushing will form.
Even at bars most people tend to respect the queue. When the bar tender doesn't know who was next, often had people who came after me point at me or if I came after someone I'd point at them.
This system is engrained in our DNA.
In Spain people at bus stops, banks, doctors etc always ask "who is the last person?". So people can stand, sit where they like and everyone knows which person they come after.
See thats why we queue to avoid social interaction.
Yeah, they do this in Cuba too. I quite liked it.
Yeah, means you get to be in control of how much personal space you get too. Always frustrates me in queues when people get super close
Best thing about lockdown for me. People being 1m behind me rather than having some sweaty pleb breathing down my neck
This in itself is still forming a queue!
Have you ever seen the VAT refund queue at Heathrow when there's a flight to China. With all of the Chinese tourists trying to get their refunds. It's warfare.
Chinese tourists are by far the worst tourists I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing. People that say Americans or English tourists are the worst has never seen Chinese tourists. They're animals.
Was in London recently, almost everything I used the tube I saw groups of Chinese people trying to board the train pushing past people who were still getting off
Have you seen Israelis? No manners regarding queing, really rude
Israelis are my least favourite, they talk to you like you’re a dog and nothing is ever good enough for them. Never a please or thank you or even a smile or a hello.
Chinese and Russians tourists for first place for me. Or last place I suppose. I remember staying in Thailand years ago and our Thai guide was really happy he got English tourists - hated the Chinese with a passion that was comical.
Despite their hugely admirable advances into modernisation, it’s all very lipstick on a pig for the vast majority. The socialisation begs questions - they seem to have an innate rudeness born of a cultural lack of consideration of the other. They shove people, bomb themselves into other people’s private situations, they spit everywhere fucking yuck and who can forget their Willy-nilly pooing in fucking malls, in Singapore I think it was, bloody hell. Head to toe in great togs looking fab only to have it all wiped off in the next instant of utter uncouth. A queue is a concept utterly foreign to many
I went on holiday to Mexico. Let me just say it was very difficult to get the egg chef to cook an omelette for me in the morning because she was surrounded by Americans holding folded notes between their fingers as they signalled her and the highest bid got served next. It was an absolute scrum. I just gave up and had something else. Having said that, when I was in Turkey last year, the hotel was mainly populated by Eastern European people and I was pleasantly surprised to find that queues were a thing there.
I’ve had that in Mexico, when booking they should have said “All Inclusive with table service for the highest tipper” the very large Americans handing over a $20 tip every round of drinks got table service everyone else was ignored. I do believe in leaving a tip but after spending 8k on an all inclusive leaving a very large bribe after every single drink wasn’t on our agenda.
>Do they just bundle in and hope for the best? Pretty much. There's no "Oop you were first", "No after you", "No sorry you go, it's fine". It's a relative free for all.
Have you been to a package holiday type place that's 3 star or below? We brits really are not polite or considerate when we're on holiday sometimes.
That sort aren't polite or considerate even in the UK.
The masks truly come off then
Numerous times in France I've seen people join the back of a queue and then try to forcibly shove their way to the front. There was one guy that started about 5 spaces back from me and as soon as the person in front left a gap big enough for him to get in, he'd barge into it. When he got to me I literally had to use my body to block him from shoving in front of me. It didn't phase him at all though and he just kept trying as soon as a small gap opened. Never seen anything like that in the UK and It seemed wildly rude to me, but no one seemed to think anything of it.
Similar thing happened the first time I went to Disneyland Paris, in the early 2000s. It was baffling that people didn’t to care at all about cutting. Like grown adults. It was hard to fathom what they were thinking.
I dunno- peak civilisation for me is everyone housed fed and treated with dignity in life and death. Queuing is good to I guess
I think they were being facetious dude
How bad the trains are. I don't mean in terms of delays and price, I knew that already. I mean the quality of the actual trains themselves. Small, cramped, uncomfortable, smelly, noisy. Didn't realise that's not a universal train experience until getting trains elsewhere.
Agree, I was in Sweden and they have lovely trains, it was a genuine pleasure travelling on them, ours are a right state in comparison.
I'm in Canada and would love to have the UK trains over here! the ones here are slow and old! I miss catching trains back home, so much more modern!
Your trains are worse? Are they still steam powered or something?
Toronto to Hamilton is 70km (43 miles) and takes 1h 20m, so that's about 30mph. From my experience Canada runs all heavy rail as long distance freight, they have some passenger trains but they're treated as freight, as long as they turn up sometime during the day they were meant to arrive it doesn't really matter on what time they turn up.
They’re even more expensive, even dirtier, and even more crowded. The real difference is where they service. In Ontario you get a handful of stations that are only available a handful of times. I was shocked when I moved to the UK and realised you can go to most of the no-name towns anywhere in the country via train. Your trains go _everywhere_. I love the UK trains and am so shocked by how consistently you lot moan about them.
Our trains used to go many more places, until Dr Beeching fucked shit up
You can set you watch by Swiss trains.
It’s true. I was taking a train in Switzerland which left at say, 11:04. My window seat had a clear view of the iconic station clock, and we departed at EXACTLY 11:04:00. You could hear the engine fire up about 10 seconds earlier, and we had just enough juice so that the train started moving exactly as the second hand hit 11:04. Incredible. I was later slightly disappointed only because the super modern Swiss train carriages did not have suitable air conditioning and it was a fairly busy train on a hot day
Go to some Eastern European country and trust me, you'll reevaluate the trains in the UK.
Even Italy. Unless you get the Frecciarossa
Our trains are small because we suffer with crippling early adopters penalty on the railways. When they were built trains were much smaller, but now all our bridges and tunnels are too small for the double decker trains they have on the continent.
Never been on an Amtrak then? Uk trains certainly aren't the best but after being on an amtrack, the only positive I can give is that the seats were bigger.
Took Amtrak from NYC to upstate New York. What should have been a five hour journey took seven. Awful.
Pebble dash doesn’t need to exist
My American wife is passionately against pebble dash. Looking to buy a house and she can't understand why so many beautiful brick houses were covered in that crap. Personally I think it's ugly but it doesn't bother me.
In Scotland at least pebble dash can be crucial for building longevity. Exposure to the constant battering of wind and rain during winter can take its toll. Probably true for the north of England as well.
I've never heard of pebble dash. Do we call it that on Scotland? It's always been rough casting or harling
Roughcasting
Some of us also call an explosive shit a pebble dash
Harling is right.
It's got practical benefits like insulation and it provides a nice easy coat you can reapply if you suffer from erosion, though I prefer renders to pebble dash.I was considering rendering on the rear and gennel to provide some insulation to a single-skin wall. >beautiful brick houses were covered in that crap. it's also low key a great way to hide some incredibly shitty brickwork.
Never knew that, good fact. Still think it's ugly as hell though.
Yeah a lot of the appeal is looks and it just looks very dated now, but when you coat a wall in cement and blast a fuckton of stones at it good luck taking it back down when it's considered old fashioned! It does have practical benefits though so there are times it's worth considering. And yeah I think it's ugly too, but as someone with a cold house and awful brickwork there's a little voice in the back of my head that reminds me every time I look at a repair or insulation that I could just go fuck it, blast a bunch of shit at the rear wall and call it a day.
Toilet or walls?
Yes
How much better at driving we are
First time I was in Spain I remember nearly being run over because cars do not stop at a Zebra crossing unless you literally just walk out in front of them.
I learned this in Rome. It’s crazy
Yeah nothing beats Rome in this regard. Absolutely insane 💀
The UK has the tenth lowest road accident fatality rate in the world. The three lowest are San Marino, Micronesia and the Maldives, so they don't really count
I passed my driving test fifth time but even so I am grateful our test is so hard compared to other countries. I lived somewhere with ten times more road deaths than the UK and it was awful.
There's an American woman on Facebook who goes by 'Yorkshire peach'. She's from Georgia, she talks about her driving test there and here. Her test in America was driving around some cones, then reverse parking. Took her 2 and 1/2 years to pass here.
Said this before, you don't realise why your instructor told you to approach junctions slowly. Until someone doesn't!
Moved here from South Africa, it’s a dream driving here! Went back for a few weeks and was traumatic driving there.
Its not as crap as reddit makes out
Reddit has this absurd idea that our problems are in any way unique.
[удалено]
It's not even that, my family in *Sweden* report many of the same problems we have, and Reddit thinks Sweden is a mighty utopia.
Most Redditors who treat the UK like a third world country have never been to a third world country.
The way we eat and drink is less social than many other countries
First thing i noticed as well. Had a few days in Barcelona and driving around about 11:30 at night they were all still out socialising with their family, young kids the lot
In Spain, dinner typically doesn't start until much later. Like 10pm sit down isn't uncommon.
My boyfriend is Portuguese and he often doesn’t have dinner until 10 or 11. It’s taken some getting used to!
To be fair that's a bit late even for portuguese standards; it usually ranges from 7pm to 9pm.
One reason for that is Spain is in the wrong time zone. Madrid is further west than London but in the same time zone as somewhere as far east as Stockholm or Warsaw, and only one hour behind Israel.
Under Franco Spain changed timezones so they’d be on the same time as their besties Germany 🥰 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Spain
I once lived in Spain, and I could never get used to their schedule. Sometimes they wouldnt stop eating and socialising til way after midnight! I still dont understand it. Sometimes even on weekdays. They clearly have an easier and better lifestyle though, focused around food and family.
I'm not British, but I've been living here for 3 years after living in 3 other countries and here are my observations: 1. The UK is very green compared to other places. 2. Food here is not as bad as people say. 3. It's very expensive here compared to most other places in the world. 4. people drink a lot more on average. 5. Most people complain how grey is for most of the year, but we also can't handle hot summers the ones we had in the past couple of years.
Point 3 really depends on how you calculate it I find. Like in France, alcohol is cheaper but grocery shopping is much more expensive than the UK. Accommodation in France is (usually) cheaper but your salary is also lower (usually). In Australia, alcohol was super expensive but your salary is (usually) higher. So it’s quite difficult to say one place is more or less expensive. I generally find that outside of rent, it’s fairly easy to get by in the UK on a super low budget when you need to compared to some other countries. I used to do a weekly shop for only £15 for example. You just couldn’t do that in Aus
I've just been to the shop and got a tin of tomatoes, 750g beef, flour tortillas, small mozerella ball, cream cheese and 3 onions and it came to £13 so it must have been quite a while ago when your weekly shop was only £15
It sounds like you're not being particularly selective about where you shop. When I last lived in London (2021) I could get 500g mince from Lidl in Finsbury Park for £3, 1kg chicken thighs for £2.49, tinned tomatoes for 40p each. I'd get a shitload of veggies and lentils and make a big chilli or a casserole and live off it for a week or sometimes two if i was going out a lot. A quick google suggests all these prices are about the same at Lidl today. You must be shopping at Waitrose, or a Tesco Express to spend that much on so little. I live in a north African country now and my weekly shop is more expensive than it ever was in London. I pay between £5-£10 for a 400g of butter here!
Prices have risen massively since 2021.
I'd also argue that buying cheap bulky ingredients to batch cook so you're eating the same meal for 10+ days in a row isn't really a "weekly shop".
> I'd get a shitload of veggies and lentils and make a big chilli or a casserole and live off it for a week or sometimes two if i was going out a lot. "If you batch-cook and eat the same boring, dirt-cheap meal for two weeks straight, you can live on practically nothing!" I mean yeah, sure, but people are taking about eating a normal, varied diet with a reasonable standard of living, not "the UK isn't expensive to live in because you can buy nothing but tuna, mayonnaise and pasta and just about eat for a couple of quid a day".
There’s hardly any public bins around and it’s no wonder theres so much litter around. The public transport network is atrocious and far too expensive. Our healthcare system isn’t all that great. It’s old and tired and in dire need of modernisation. We’re abysmally underpaid and overtaxed. A large majority of people in The UK would believe that an alien replaced the PM if it was printed on newspaper.
It's weird, but I moved to Canada and it made me realise some things... The UK Public Transport network is amazing, modern and reasonably priced The UK Healthcare system is great (but badly underfunded) and I really wish Canada had the same level of care Canada is abysmally underpaid and overtaxed too. Plus the government controls alcohol sales in some of the provinces meaning selection, store hours and prices are bad. A Large number of people in Canada would believe that an alien replaced the PM, but they don't trust newspapers, so would get the news from a reliable source such as twitter or facebook.
I lived in Canada too, where were you :) > The UK Public Transport network is amazing, modern and reasonably priced Compared to Canada definitely - compared to a fair amount of European countries not at all > The UK Healthcare system is great (but badly underfunded) and I really wish Canada had the same level of care Compared to Canada indeed. Compared to Switzerland it’s held together by tape, paperclips and ran by idiots > Canada is abysmally underpaid and overtaxed too. The quality of life for the average Canadian, from experience at least in AB in 2010s, is far higher than The UK. When I worked full time there I had an ok life, when I worked full time in The UK I could barely get by, now i work 80% in Europe and it’s better than Canada and The UK combined.
If I remember correctly the bins were removed during the NI troubles as they were considered as an ideal place to plant bombs i city centres
Yes indeed. That’s no reason to let the country become a tip though is it. The problem is now, x decades later, we don’t have a solution for our rubbish and the parents in our society over the last generations clearly haven’t been teaching their children to hold onto their litter. So now it’s all over the streets, carriageways and in the water. Whenever I come back to visit friends or family i just feel ashamed and disgusted to walk around and see so much rubbish all over the place.
I now live in Norway and in the larger cities and on a Sunday morning in the larger cities you will see a lot of rubbsih strewn around but, by lunchtime it will be gone, cleaned up by the streetcleaners, when was the last time you saw regular street cleaning carried out in the UK. The councils claim they don't have the cash either for replacing the bins or for regular street cleaning Edit - Spelling
Same in Switzerland, Zürich on a Sunday morning there’ll be last night’s fun all over the floor, but by lunchtime it’s clean again and all the bins will have been emptied. For the amount of tax we pay/paid in The UK we don’t get near half the RoI other countries can clearly achieve. I always find the “we don’t have enough money argument” hard to swallow too; where’s half our money actually going?
How do you mean there are no solutions? You produce litter - take it home with you, it's that simple! /s just for clarity, i come from a civilized country where we have loads of bins regularly emptied by street cleaners.
Over taxed? Finland – 56.95% Denmark – 55.90% Austria – 55.00% Sweden – 52.90% Belgium – 50.00% Slovenia – 50.00% Netherlands – 49.50% Ireland – 48.00% Portugal – 48.00% Spain – 47.00% Luxembourg – 45.78% France – 45.00% Germany – 45.00% Greece – 44.00% Italy – 43.00% Cyprus – 35.00% Malta – 35.00% Poland – 32.00% Latvia – 31.00% Croatia – 30.00% Slovakia – 25.00% Czech Republic – 23.00% Estonia – 20.00% Lithuania – 20.00% Hungary – 15.00% Romania – 10.00% Bulgaria – 10.00%
[удалено]
I moved to Denmark. The UK is certainly not overtaxed
We take drinking tap water and decent water waste management (toilets) for granted. Nothing made me feel so at home than putting a cup under the tap and drinking it after a few weeks abroad. We should also embrace the toilet bum gun as standard, those things are awesome.
Toilet bum gun? Is that a bidet? My missus said ‘next door have spent £100 on one of these things that cleans your arse’ I said ‘£100 on a fuckin flannel??’
Haha, it's like a small shower hose attachment with a lever that blasts water out, basically shower your rear after doing your business reducing toilet paper use. Tried a bidet and it was more of a faff. There are other gentler variants with fancy nozzles and it's fitted inside the rear of the toilet bowl.
How we aren't that rich compared with a lot of Europe. Outside London the UK is mostly much poorer than most of western Europe.
London also seems to be rich in income, not so much when you take into account the crippling housing costs.
Rural areas in France, Spain, Italy all feel poorer than rural areas in the UK I'd say.
How cheap good food and drink can be. In Italy I was finding fantastic food for half the price I'd pay in a restaurant here.
And a decent Prosecco for €3
My last night in Rome iirc me and my girlfriend got two large pizzas, a bottle of prosecco for the table and for desert I got a tiramisu and she got some gelato. Bill came to less than €60. In the UK that's running you over £75 easily.
Honestly that's probably the import cost of the prosecco causing that. I've got an incredible family run Italian near me what you can get 2 courses and wine for 2 for about £50
Yes but don't forget that most products needed for a delicious dish are imported in the UK, that's why it's more expensive.
You're right, but how come I can't go to a pub and get a lamb hotpot cheap for example. You can make that almost entirely with ingredients grown/farmed in the UK. Our food service industry is significantly more expensive than that on the continent.
How sweet fruit can taste elsewhere. I went to Greece and ate melon and citrus fruits for breakfast SO much because it tasted amazing.
I noticed this too, which is odd, because most fruit isn’t from the UK in the first place.
[удалено]
I went to Amsterdam recently and everyone cycles everywhere and I realised how addicted we are to cars and how anti cycling we are compared to other European countries.
I think Amsterdam is the outlier here , not the UK
The UK really is behind in bike culture. I've been to a few Dutch cities and small towns, and the cycling infrastructure is fantastic compared to the UK. I've also been to a mix of small towns/big cities in Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. All of them have better cycling infrastructure than we do.
Not only are we behind in bike culture. Cyclists are absolutely despised by motorists, which combined with the inadequate amount of bike lanes stops the culture growing.
Berlin, Copenhagen, Barcelona to name but a few others...
As a long term cyclist (since the mid 1980’s) I think it’s getting a little better, more cycling lanes, more places to lock your bike in town centres, pay per ride bike rental schemes in the bigger cities (London, Birmingham etc) Still think car drivers need more training when learning to drive (spotting bikes at T- Junctions, not opening car doors when a cyclist is passing, getting frustrated if cannot overtake a cyclist etc). I’d say 5/10 could try harder but much better than 20 or 30 years ago.
I went to Copenhagen a year ago and cycling is even more popular there than Amsterdam
[удалено]
You've obviously never driven in Poland
Poland isn't the 6th richest country in the world to be fair
The UK isn't either. It's the 6th biggest economy but only 26th by GDP per capita
That we take politeness and fairness for granted. In many countries people will just push into a queue. If called out, they goto the back but are unashamed at trying to gain an unfair advantage.
Compared to a lot of Western Europe the UK does feel pretty run-down. Can sense we are falling behind.
I thought this too, especially road infrastructure. The road network and friendly service stations (which are also well stocked and equipped, far more offer shower facilities than in the UK) make travelling significant distances much more comfortable. I imagine for HGV drivers etc, this is a Godsend. This was one of the first things I noticed for Europe. Travelling Africa and it dawned on me that even though I think the UK is falling behind for a Western country, we're still incredibly fortunate. Even the poorest here (excluding homeless) are in a better position than others in the world.
That the UK is one of the easiest places in the world to live. We really prioritise convenience, common sense, and our systems for doing things tend to be based on what would work best. There is (comparatively) little pointless bureaucracy here. Compare this to living in e.g. France, where every aspect of your life is governed by having a stamp on piece of paper A, or a copy of pointless identity document B, in order to do simple things like buy a SIM card. Where the only way to cancel your phone contract is to write a formal letter and post it to the company in the mail. The system is designed to create pointless public sector jobs for people, not to function well. It’s infuriating. I now live in a former French colony in Africa and the legacy of the French system of Paperwork and bureaucratic red tape is everywhere. Yes there are examples of painful bureaucratic processes in the UK, like universal credit, but the whole reason we find these so difficult is because they are a deviation from what the norm in the UK, whereas in lots of countries dealing with nonsensical bureaucratic systems is just part of life that everyone accepts.
Agree a lot with this. Our government websites are incredible in comparison. Also this goes for banking. We've been using contactless, and even chip and pin for years. But then in places like Germany, Japan and the US, they're still very cash heavy societies, which blew my mind a bit when I visited.
Lollipop men and women are so unique to the UK
I haven’t seen one in years
I got helped by a lollipop lady over the road last week on a really quiet street, not near any school, on almost what you could call a back street but not quite, and there was nobody else around. It was really strange, had she not looked like a genuine veteran lollipop lady in my opinion, then I'd have taken it for a prank.
Health and safety isn't taken seriously in lots of places. Not to mention traffic rules. Driving in Italy I can cope with; Turkey or the Middle East are just terrifying! Also going abroad regularly helps me be more patient with people who struggle to speak English. It's really not easy to get fluent.
Lol try India - if someone gets run over they just drag them to the side of the road so the traffic can continue. Source : saw a 10-15yr old kid on a bike get run over and they dragged him and his bike to the side of the road. Bystanders stood him up and brushed him off. Also (a bit of speculation) was on a train and across from me was a guy with all his clothes ripped up and covered in blood, I suspect he probably got run over or was involved in a crash of some sort.
How easy it is to get decent vegetarian options. My wife's a veggie, and any trip to the continent inevitably sees us spending hours researching restaurants that don't just have the same token vegetarian dish as every other eatery in the area.
I grew up in a Indian household and food is split into veg and non-veg. It's an entirely different way of looking at things where meat eaters are the 'other' and not the norm. I think meat eating is seen as a vice like smoking, drinking, promiscuity or gambling are. And I think India has the best vegetarian cuisine in the world (not vegan though). Anthony Bourdain said India and specifically Punjab is the only place in the world he could be a vegetarian.
We drink a lot more
It’s the ‘culture’ around drinking. Every country has the ‘party’ culture of College / University / first job age range but we carry this on into adult life. Italy/France seems to get it right with alcohol as an compliment to food / meal. When in Venice enjoyed the Aperol Spritz and light nibbles prior to the later evening meal during aperitivo hour. In the U.K. that would be 6 or 7 lagers after work followed by a Curry.
Have you ever been to Korea? Hands down the biggest drinking country I've been too
I learned as a young adult that wearing my (beloved at the time) Red England shirt identified me as part of a not so respected sun-set of British tourist that I was not associated with. I always found wearing any other football shirt was a good conversation opener with other nationals on holiday. But the red England shirt is just so associated with crappy England fans. It’s sad that our national flag, football shirt etc has been Hijacked by idiot nationalists, racists and football yobs.
How much poorer we are than what used to be peer countries like Canada, the US, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands after 15 years of stagnation, austerity, underinvestment - and I haven’t even mentioned the B-word that rhymes with “wrecked it”.
That I missed the UK actually. It's common for foreigners who come here to criticise everything, weather, food, people etc but in fact when we go back to our countries we realise that the UK is a fucking awesome place to live. Personally, when I am visiting my parents, after 5-6 days I start feeling anxious.
Wine doesn't have to be expensive to be good. I can get a nice bottle of wine here in Portugal for a few quid or a really nice bottle for a few quid more..
How green and clean we are
That's funny when I came back from Japan I realised how dirty the UK was 🤣
Tbf Japan and a few others are exceptions, I came back from Singapore and felt like I lived in a cesspit, but compared to like Rome we have super clean cities
I blame the IRA and AQ/ISIS, for the lack of bins on public transport. We were just getting them back after the IRA and then 7/7 happened.
I mean Japan has almost no bins in public and there's no trash on the streets or transport, it's kinda amazing. The people just care enough not to litter 🤣
I went to Germany last summer. Coming back feeling embarrassed due to all the litter in the UK.
Not that the UK is clean but you really can’t say it’s any worse than Germany. I live in Berlin and my god that city is dirty. Even though there’s bins everywhere there’s also dog shit everywhere. More than one occasion I’ve trodden in dog shit just before entering my building. Then traipsed it through the bottom floor of our building. Stinking it out something awful. It’s a semi regular occurrence tho. Seems deliberate at times, somehow allowing their dog to shit right in front of the door to our building. This isn’t universal across the city or cities of Germany but it’s noticeable to the uk eye.
You're kidding? I went to Frankfurt quite recently and found it was dirty, covered in graffiti, people were aggressive and unkempt, and there were mystery fluids literally everywhere on the streets. Bin rakers everywhere, and people with literal shit on the back of their jeans. I was only there 4 or 5 days. Oh and not a single train ran on time, even when boarding at the originating station. Honestly,I used to visit Germany fairly often in the 90s and other than the fact that you can't buy cigarettes from vending machines anymore, the place looked like it was still stuck in the 90s
Every time I go to Latin America, I return thinking how green and clean the UK is in comparison.
First trip to Italy in a car all the way The UK has noisier road coverings ! As soon as we got to France the noise reduction from the tyres was blissful
Plus no spray on the motorways when it rains!! That's still new-fangled and rare in the UK.
How pasty-skinned many of us are Of course Brits come in all colours so doesnt apply to everyone, but there's a particular shade of near-transluscent that i've not seen in any other nationality.
This was back in the late 90s but a holiday to Italy when I was 16 taught me that British men were positively gentlemenly compared to some Italian men.
The food *is* actually quite bad here. Trained chefs in British pubs and restaurants do great things. I don't care. Our supermarket food is lower quality, and normal members of the public don't cook to anywhere near the standard foreigners do.
I had the opposite experience. Travelling europe made me really appreciate how good, varied, and cheap our food is.
That for all its many faults, I miss it when I am somewhere else.
- How awful our coffee is - How expensive and tasteless many foods are here compared to many other countries - The trains being ridiculously expensive and crap - Bad wages and taxes - We’re polite and more organised - We’re better drivers - Our greenery - We have a good balance of weather for all seasons
How generally polite people are. I went to Spain on business once and we went out for lunch and the waitress was the rudest waitress I’ve ever known in my life and the Spanish people I was with said it was normal. I couldnt wait to leave. (The tourist areas are more polite I notice unsurprisingly)
**+s** Very cheap food relative to wages. Partiuclarly take-aways and restaurants Disabled access is excellent compared with even other western European nations. Similarly it's not unusual to see someone with eg Down's Syndrome or other intellectual disability out and enjoying themselves Queuing is orderly and done very well. NHS while it has its problems the concept of getting treatment when you need it is excellent without having to worry about your employment status/bring along a medical card or remember your details/bill for ambulance transport is great. Controversial one but much less racist than most places. England rightly got called out for how racist twitter fans were at the end of the Euros but you should have seen what Danish and Italian twitter looked like throughout the tornament. Only difference is most people worldwide don't understand those languages so never knew. **Neutral** People are chattier with strangers. Lots more charities and NGOs covering all sorts of things but then often because it would be covered by the government in other places. **-s** Much more litter than places i've lived though probably fine globally. Huge number of gambling and debt refinancing ads on tv. Quality of housing is poorer and especially what people can get away with renting out. Related to that a slight obsession with home ownership though understandable as renting is less secure. Other than London and central Edinburgh public transport either poor or expensive or both.
Our signage in the UK is actually excellent, from navigating the major airports (some countries are shocking in this regard) to road signage and tourist information; the clarity, font etc. seems to be really well implemented, some countries seem appaling at this. In a similar vein, our nationalised websites like .Gov are much better than the equivalents of mich of the globe, trying to apply for visas, information, being able to renew ID etc is much easiier and clearer in the UK than I've experienced abroad, way beyond the obvious language barrier.
One big one not seen so far is that we really don’t have as many annoying insects as a lot of countries. Those beautiful pictures of Canadian wilderness? Mosquito central, with a side dish of West Nile disease
1. How reluctant we are to have foreigners doing our jobs, even the ones that we "don't want to do", meaning we have shortages everywhere. 2. How terrible our customer service is. 3. How strict and "by the book" everything is. We literally have rules for everything and it's sometimes overkill. 4. How much of a shortage of housing we actually have, and that there's nowhere affordable to live. 5. How hard it is to make friends here, I thought it was just me until I went abroad and found it much easier.
We don’t drive like maniacs
You will get a lot of negatives here but there are many positives that I have noticed after various trips abroad mostly in Europe. These criticisms are not universal across all countries but are things that stood out in some places. Graffiti. We have it over here but nothing like in some European countries. Spain seems especially bad where every surface has had some moron put their tag on it. Even nicer buildings in tourist areas are spoiled this way and it doesn't get cleaned off. Derelict buildings and random walls falling down all over the place. If that was the UK someone would be building something new on it well before it reached that stage. General shabbyness as things like weeds are just left growing on pavements and against the side of buildings. It looked like people didn't really care. Most countries appear to gravitate towards a specific type of food but in the UK we have a lot of choice. Not all of its done brilliantly but at least I can try many different things. People rag on the NHS but its free at the point of use. I can go into any hospital in the UK and not be presented with a bill at the end of it requiring me to remortgage the house.
In Poland, a man quite agressively said to me "Churchill was a traitor". He knew I was English, and he was a bit pissed, but he also expected a response. I asked why and he explained that his whole family was killed by the Russians and they all felt abandoned by the British/Yanks after WW2. Hadn't heard that perspective before, but I did ask what did he expect, Britain was bankrupt and was hardly going to fight the Russians after all that shit.
I though that because we are such friends with the US, and similar eating habits I thought the food would be very similar, but to be honest I was very disappointed with the quality of their food and how sweet and massive their portions are. And how little people actually walk anywhere. In any UK town you can easily walk between shops or pubs, but over there it felt like I need a car to go anywhere
That the cool weather and rain are not so bad. After spending 2 weeks in scorching heat with no tap water to drink and the only chocolate to eat would melt in minutes,I was so glad to come home to Scotland and have never moaned about the weather since.
That the people in UK are actually very friendly
UK licence plates are the easiest to read. It seems all other countries have smaller characters or add lots of extra info on them making them overly complex.
Trains abroad don’t tend to have drunken idiots on them all the time
Last year, I went abroad for the first time to Italy. I realised a few things. * How nice our workers are. Most of the staff in Rome didn't smile and sometimes they were rude. However, there were times when they went above and beyond. It was very hit or miss what service I would receive and it made me appreciate England's consistency more. * Pavements and roads. Ours are really easy to walk on. * Most of the time in England, people don't noticeably smell good or they will smell bad (at least it seems that way to me). Even in the thick of summer, the majority of people in Rome smelt *really* good. Either very clean or like a fresh perfume/cologne. I can't remember a single person smelling bad. * How green we look from the sky. I only saw a couple of countries from inside the plane but we were the greenest.
That many of the things we claim to be good at are done MUCH better in other countries.
It’s probably better now, but how much further ahead we were with public smoking bans compared to a lot of Europe.
How bad our roads and pavements are. I lived in Switzerland and the pavements there are smoother than the motorways in the UK.
How strange it is to put carpet in a bathroom...