An American woman revealed what parts of UK culture truly baffle her – and they may have you questioning your patriotism.
The student, dubbed as ‘@alwaysdressbest‘, has been travelling across England during the past few weeks. Her quintessentially ‘British’ itinerary included snapping selfies at Buckingham Palace, exploring cathedrals and watching the Euros.
While she’s having a whale of a time and even claims our York is far ‘cooler than New York’, there’s a few bizarre aspects of our nation that she just can’t look past. Taking to Instagram, she explained: “Overall, I’ve enjoyed travelling the UK and I didn’t expect it to be the same as America, but I wanted to share these unexpected differences that popped up in my travels.
“Number four I can’t get over!” First up, the student drew attention to our shop closing times. Outside London, she was shocked to find that stores close at 5-6pm.
Meanwhile, US-based Walmart ‘Supercenters’ are typically open 24/7 no matter what.
She continued: “Two, nobody drinks water here and I know that Stanley’s and Hydro Flasks are an American trend and I didn’t expect people to be carrying around water bottles this big, but I have legit seen nobody, no European, take a sip of water.
“Even at restaurants, no one even is ordering water. It’s only the Americans.”
Brace yourselves, as her third culture shock is certainly a divisive one. Believe it or not, she found our vaping habits utterly wild. “This one surprised me a lot,” she confessed.
“Smoking and vaping is done very publicly here. In America, if you want to have a cigarette or take a hit of your vape, you usually go to like the side of the street or in a corner.
“But here, I’ll be walking and the person legit next to me, the smoke and vape is just like flying in my face. I feel like that doesn’t happen in America. People do it more privately!”
And finally, the student was gobsmacked by Britain’s perception of time. While residents may deem a three-hour car ride quite long, she found this difficult to grasp.
She explained: “The bus driver of our tour had to take not one but two ‘mandatory’ breaks on only a three-hour car ride…
“But the first break we took was an hour-and-a-half in, and then after that, an hour and 20 minutes later, we took a half-hour break. Three hours might be considered a long time here, but it baffles me that it was considered long enough to have not one but two breaks. I know in America we would just drive right through!”
Unsurprisingly, this stirred up quite the reaction online, with many people in stitches over her take. One person quipped: “As a Brit I can confirm we do drink water a lot,” as another joked: “Scottish person here. Nobody in England drinks water cause it’s polluted c***. Scottish water is all pure glacial water and we drink it by the gallon daily.”
Meanwhile, others were in complete denial that any of her claims were true. One person wrote: “Haha the bus driver is trolling you. That’s not true,” as another stressed: “I’m sorry but other than the smoking/vaping, nothing is true.”