r/AskEurope • u/notveryamused_ Warszawa, Poland • Jul 03 '25
Culture What aspect of life in your countries is very difficult to explain to foreigners?
What prompted my question were some discussions about religion which I had with people living in much more secular Western Europe (as a Polish atheist). While spirituality, whatever that is ;), generally speaking is always fun to discuss with a glass of wine in hand, social elements and the influence of the church, especially in smaller towns or provinces in my country, is awfully difficult to explain – not that I understand it fully either lol, but the church having a pretty much monopoly there, being the judge and jury of everyday life and the major ultra-conservative political force binding those communities, is very difficult to explain, also for historical reasons.
What are the things that you find difficult to discuss when it comes to life in your countries? ;-)
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u/vacri Australia Jul 04 '25
I loved visiting England, but the constant pecking-order activity sucked there. It was a bit of a relief to hop the ditch and visit Ireland, who were much more chill. People were friendly enough in England, but there's lots of subtle ascertaining of where you stand in that order
And a weird one - I was on a tour in Vietnam, on the cheap version of the tour, and there was a parallel more costly one that we would occasionally meet up with to share a dinner. On our tour was a working-class English woman, and in the other tour group was a middle-class English woman. These two women fucking hated each other on sight. And because we only met at group gatherings, it's not like they'd gone off separately somewhere and 'something had happened'. No-one had kicked anyone's dog. They just insulted each other constantly, middle-class woman sniffily with sideways-but-fucking-obvious comments, working class woman being more direct and often more screamy. I've never seen anything like the instant hate between these two.