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Just came back from my first ever visit to a western country, I've never set foot outside the Middle East before. I'm still bewildered, concerned, fascinated, AMAish (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/chat@hexbear.net
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I don’t know how interesting this might be to you people. I may have to be vague about some stuff (what country etc) for security reasons, just given my situation and how everyone from my area is being stalked by the IDF, sorry about that. My head’s still in vacation mode and I’m mostly surrounded by (nice! Well meaning! I can’t talk about everything important with them!) libs.

I always found it interesting that, the internet still being US-Eurocentric for the most part, most writings is from people with similar vantage points that I have no experience with. Even in lefty spaces, I find some stuff to be oddly taken for granted or at face value about the different places we all live. My lived experience is somewhat detached from the Western fascination with the theater of polite liberal democracy.

Realistically based on what I’ve shared on this account I could plausibly be expected to visit one of like fifteen countries across Europe + its buddies (and the US had it not been a comically bad time to visit), so I feel somewhat safe talking about it. Sorry if the paranoia is seems ridiculous, I spent four months under daily MK drone buzzing for no fucking good reason recently, I make my own rules.

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[–] [S] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

What gave you the most culture shock?

Bidet aside.

Might sound weird, but I immediately noticed a lot more signage than I'm used to. Notices not to touch things, to stay away from cables, where not to throw garbage, even simple things like looking after your belongings. Normally I'm only used to seeing no smoking signs if anything. Tons of signs, audio cues. Accessibility is cool, and accessibility helps everyone, I was looking for wheelchair signs when I was lugging my suitcase.

I have some thoughts on how social norms are a bit different in the city center. I'm used to the nights out being more insular (you mostly interact with your friends and meet people through them), and, paradoxically, people out and about in the day being friendlier. I said hello to cashiers and bus drivers and it was basically just me doing that. If this one is a faux pas I'd rather keep doing it.

There's obviously very different attitudes to sex, casual sex, sexuality, even things like how/how little people are willing to dress. I don't think I'm in the right place to package how I felt about this kind of thing, much less discuss it on Hexbear. Yeah it would be funny to put a spoiler block for a content warning for "cis-hetero-dude discusses sexuality". But frankly despite being quite happy for everyone else to do their thing, and hoping I've been mature about friends who move exploring that realm without judgement, I find it extremely intimidating. A few years ago I had a bit of a weird internal discomfort when women friends of mine would confide about some experiences after moving to such countries - like I in principle am supportive but feel weird about it just given me not being used to these things being discussed. People do have sex here obviously, but I'm not very sexually/romantically outgoing, so it was weird. This trip gave me a bit of that? A childish feeling like I have a lot to learn socially and that includes navigating this side of socialization and it just being a normal part of other people's lives. Any more than this would require that "joke" CW.

I'm somewhat comfortable enough with Lemmy/Hexbear to admit that I think of things I might write or say about this side of the social contract as somewhat incel-adjacent and quite frankly that freaks me out to see in my thoughts. I guess more in the original academic sense. It's explicitly not something I wallow in or try to seek community in.

What counts as too much or too little garlic is very different in Europe. That's funny right?

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