People shared the common things in Britain that visitors always find super strange – 21 proper eye-openers

To the corner of Reddit called ‘AskUK’ where they’ve been discussing the ways in which people from abroad find Blighty odd after Redditor Dull_Gas_820 posted this:

‘What’s something really common in the UK that visitors find strange? Had friends from the US stay over Christmas who found it really odd we have the bathroom light switches on the outside of the bathroom, amongst other stuff. Interested to hear what other people have heard?’

And there were plenty of excellent examples, like these…

1.

‘My foreign friends can’t get over us having our washing machines in our kitchens. In other countries it seems more common for them to be in the bathroom if there’s no space for a separate utility/laundry dry room.’
–posh_chav

2.

‘A Sunday roast, they can’t believe that we can cook basically their equivalent of a Thanksgiving meal, each weekend.’
–crazyabbit

3.

‘For a Christmas-themed one – my Italian friend found the concept of crackers and wearing paper hats at Xmas dinner really odd.’
–Civil-Koala-8899

4.

‘I did Covid Christmas with my lab mates – the crackers and Christmas pudding they found a bit weird. Although my description of Christmas pudding as ‘dried fruit, six different types of alcohol, and sugar’ possibly didn’t help matters.’
–Suspicious_Tax8577

5.

‘Actually walking to get somewhere, even somewhere just a few hundred yards away (for Americans from almost anywhere other than NYC).’
–Amanensia

6.

‘We are in early 50s and our US friends (same age) arrived to stay and they brought a case about the size of a medicine cabinet full of all sorts of tablets. They could not believe we do not take any medication.

We went to stay with them the next year and I quickly realised every other TV advert is for medication. I asked a GP friend in UK about it and he said in US GPs can make commission on every tablet prescribed.’
–Odd_Pain_3570

7.

‘From my American wife, the things she loves. Roast dinners. English brekky. Constant tea, bikkys, walking in the open countryside, NHS, lack of obvious racism (she’s mixed race) cake selection in supermarkets, M&S, public transportation (yes really) Harry Potter world, people using forks and knives correctly, the fact I call my best mate a thick cunt, and he calls me a baldy cunt.’
–dereks63

8.

‘The jank level of our housing (especially conversions and extensions) can be baffling to Europeans. A friend of my ex had their posh German parents visiting and caught them telling their friend back home that Burton-on-Trent was ‘like the Third World’.’
–Uncle_Zardoz

9.

‘The fact that there are footpaths across almost all parts of the countryside and there are a lot of farms that you can freely walk through.’
–Bbew_Mot

10.

‘Drinking in public is a bit taboo in lots of parts of the US still. Have had a few Americans comment that it feels weird seeing people stand outside a pub with a pint or sit in the park with bottles of wine on display.’
–BobBobBobBobBobDave

11.

‘Cat flaps. We have a B&B and have many non-British people stay and so many have never seen a cat flap before. One woman spent hours enticing our cats in and out of the cat flap to record and take photos. I’d never thought that cat flaps weren’t a universal thing before then.’
–chroniccomplexcase

12.

‘Parking against the direction of the traffic flow. I moved to the UK in the 90s and still find this odd. Whilst maybe convenient for some, it stops traffic unnecessarily if someone wants to get into a space on the opposite side and causes unnecessary disruption when someone wants to leave that space.’
–Resali