UK dwellers, I have a question.
I'd like some advice from people from the UK or those who have relocated there.
I'm an American, and it's a goal of mine to move to the UK, someday. The climate (rain, warm summers, mild winters) is great, I like old-to-ancient structures, I prefer smaller homes, and I find British culture more tolerable than that of America.
However, I am unsure of some things. I know that people tend to think other countries superior/more sophisticated compared to their own, so I'm sure I'm being a little over-optimistic. I know that culture shock is a thing, and I've tried to prepare by reading up on British culture, but a few anecdotes and online lists can only cover so much.
One of my teachers says that she was shocked by how much Europeans hate Americans, and I'd really like to know if this is true, and to what extent. I can handle glares in public. Having bricks thrown through my windows would be slightly more upsetting.
Any contributions are appreciated, from either NT or ASD/similar point of view.
Hi, I'm from the UK.
The climate here actually sucks TBH, it rains all the time As far as British culture is concerned, how can I explain it, I know on the TV and stuff British people are portrayed as being "posh" and loving tea. People do like tea (I hate it though) but the majority of us aren't posh at all.
British people are, I would say, quite reserved in general, but they can be rather cold and conceited. But I would say a lot of people are nice.
I can't speak for every British person, but I wouldn't say British people particularly hate American people, more than they hate people from other countries, which I don't think they do. As far as glares in public and brick-throwing are concerned, I doubt it would be more likely to happen to you than it would be to anybody else. Stuff like that could happen to anyone, anywhere, in any country, so you shouldn't worry about that.
I'd agree with Catlover's post. The English (generally) do like to to hate everyone. The further down South you go, the milder the weather, but the people (again, generally) are less tolerant. The poor are really struggling at the moment, as the current government don't care about them at all, and the class divide is getting bigger. There's a lot of poverty in some places. So we're really not all posh, although many are elitist. I live down South, and some of the attitudes are terrible. Scotland is great, the people are (generally.....) open-minded and down-to-earth, but the weather is horrendous.
Maybe it's time to move somewhere with horrendous weather
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The red lake has been forgotten. A dust devil stuns you long enough to shroud forever those last shards of wisdom. The breeze rocking this forlorn wasteland whispers in your ears, “Não resta mais que uma sombra”.
I spent 2and a half years in London, coming from Germany. I did not manage to grow roots there. Small houses is one thing. Drafty, poorly insulated small rooms in a flatshare that cost a fortune is another. The cost of living is horrendous. I was constantly ill to to the cool, moist climate. It doesn't rain constantly. just every half an hour- resulting in the impossibility to dress according to the weather.
The British treated me friendly, but kept their distance. I found it very difficult to make British friends, and found myself being very much an outsider in work situations.
It took me ages to realizes that while everyone dresses like a 5 year old in a thrift shop, the social strata are clearly walled off by sociolect - for a German, an impenetrable wall- as an American, you might fare better.
The best thing about London, I found, is the Asian restaurants and shops. Which none of the few British friends I had managed to make would dare to enter on their own- British people and foreigners don't really seem to mix, but to live alongside each other, full of xenophobia for each other.
That being said, London in particular is an exciting city. I spent most of my weekends in my tiny flatshare room, stressed out by the amazing amount of noise, and by the fact that I couldn't afford the entry for ... anything.
It felt as if loitering on the streets costs money.
soo... I had bad experiences, but that doesn't mean you'll have those too.
Just watch some 'rule britannia' on vice.com, it gives a better image of the UK than, say, Harry Potter.
(actually, there are of course parts that feel like Harry potter or Nottinghill. You'll find those to feel tacky and fake, if they should allow you entry into such spheres)
I never managed to get over the cultural differences. I made a bunch of chinese friedns, though, I got along well with them.
Scotland is great for holidays (vacation), but riddled with poverty and unemployment. And deep-fried Mars bars, among othe gustatoric abominations, which are abundant all over the UK. (But you're familiar with those, - I remember deep-fried butter being a thing in the US...)
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BirdInFlight
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This is my take, based on having lived in both the US and the UK for many, many years each.
I'm British born but did my "real" growing up in the US.
I returned to the UK a few years ago.
Seriously, based on my own experiences, which is after all, all I can go by -- YOU DO NOT WANT TO LIVE IN THE UK.
People are going to object to my post but they can go take a running jump, because this is my account of MY experiences in MY SHOES that nobody can take away from me or deny has happened to me or are my observations and experiences.
Almost everything about life on a day-to-day basis, is better in America than in England. Everything in the US is geared toward convenience and smooth running.
NOTHING is convenient or smooth in the UK.
The following is my personal experience of the particular city I lived in in the US, and London where I live now.
US -- drive through banks with lots of teller stations.
UK -- trudge on foot to a teeny tiny high street bank because even if you drive there's nowhere to park.
US-- parking ANYWHERE you need to go. They don't build a supermarket, library, store, bank, movie theater, NOTHING without also acres of parking.
UK -- nowhere to park, or places where you have to pay a lot of money and still wind up towed away or wheel clamped. Serious problem in London.
US-- had my drivers licence.
UK -- my US drivers licence is not accepted in the UK. I failed my UK test under enormous stress, do not have the heart to try again, feel resentful that I HAVE a perfectly good licence and was merrily driving around the US of A for a million years but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, they won't let me drive here.
I now ride a bicycle and walk, in middle age just when I most need the comfort, convenience and safety of a car. I now don't go even to the local shop after dark because I don't feel safe walking on foot alone. I used to feel safe in my car in the US to go anywhere at any hour.
US -- the general attitude is more optimistic and can-do. THAT WAS GOOD FOR ME. It actually helped me be the same.
UK -- everything is downbeat here. Optimism and can-do is squished and derided. You can fall into the well and never feel like anything's possible again in this country. I mean that.
US -- shopping is amazing. It's all about wide selection of choices in the US.
UK -- even a big supermarket with tons of space still manages not to give you any freaking CHOICES. Selection tends to be poor. I go online more than ever in my life now, because it's the only way I can find certain things. That was never a problem in my US city.
US -- weather where I was, terribly hot but at least you saw sunshine for 300 days a year.
UK -- MISERABLE. And even though winters aren't East Coast cold like minus 20, it DOES get cold here for months and months in a chilly, bone-chilling, damp way. It may only be right on freezing or 35 F but it FEELS miserable and it lasts forever. Winter here seems to start in October and end in freaking May. It feels dark, cold, rainy, miserable for more of the year than its sunny and nice.
US -- air conditioning where you need or want it.
UK -- "What's air conditioning?" Even though it's only sunny and hot for about eight minutes each summer, YOU WANT TO FREAKING DIE. Because for that tiny spell that it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit and SUPER humid, there is no air conditioning. You will be dying in your home, your office, the shops you shop in. Because nobody here sees the point in having any just for a few "heatwave days" each year.
US -- people in general were very polite, had great conventional manners, and for someone on the autism spectrum it especially felt easier for me because you have a script to work to, because even NTs do. I found life's random encounters with strangers so much easier because everyone says the same things and I could formulate the same answers.
This was especially true with customer service. Every cashier in the US is trained to say the same things and ask the same things. You know you're going to get a "Hello! How are you doing today? Did you find everything okay?"
I knew just what to say back.
UK-- THIS JUST DOESN'T HAPPEN. No people in customer service are trained to say any damn thing at all. You can walk up to a cashier in the supermarket and you don't even KNOW what you're going to get.
You may get a sulky "Hi." Then nothing as he or she drags your items across the scanner. You may get nothing at all. No greeting nothing. Then I don't know what to say either. There is NO SCRIPT. I started feeling stupid saying a cheery "HELLO!" anyway -- because it's likely to get you a dirty look. These encounters are awkward and dismal. The American customer service scripts may be phony and silly but at least everyone knows what's expected of them and it's great for those on the spectrum because you don't have to wing it, you know what's going to be said to you and you know what you're supposed to say back.
I felt MUCH more relaxed in that setting in American life.
Also rudeness in general -- people don't introduce each other in England! I can't tell you how many times I've been amazed that I'm talking to someone I know, then someone they know joins the conversation and we're talking for the next twenty minutes ---- without ANYONE introducing themselves or the other person who has joined the conversation. What the hell is it with British people?
Nobody says "Oh by the way this is Denise." I have really become obsessed with this strange phenomenon, of how many times people don't bother to tell you either their own name or the name of someone who just walked up. It's WEIRD.
US -- the news is delivered in a neutral tone of voice.
UK -- the news is delivered by people making their voice sound like their dog AND their mother just got torched in a house fire. It makes watching or hearing the news feel even MORE anxiety producing to someone like me who is sensitive to stress from world news already.
US -- at least they follow the nightly news with a feel good show like Leno or Letterman (at least in the old days).
UK - they follow the news with ANOTHER depressing show to send you to bed on, like a social ills program or a documentary on something horrible.
US -- I personally found casual sexism not very prevalent. Men in my city were being stay at home fathers and very sensitive to womens issues.
UK -- casual sexism is still rampant. I thought I had time traveled back to the 1970s or 50s
US -- in my city people tended to be laid back, with an automatic default of basically nice.
UK -- in London at least (don't know about the rest of the country) everyone is tense. People have a normal surface demeanor but immediately beneath the surface there is all this anger that much more easily busts out. British people feel to me like they still have that dark ages warrior thing going on, where the least little conflict brings out vicious anger. People are NOT "Downton Abbey" here -- people are angry and tense and basically hate each other juuuuust underneath the surface, in London. I'm doing it too.
Seriously, don't live here. I made a decision to come back thinking everything would be fine, but I'm not kidding around when I tell you that after the time I lived in America, which really suited me and I really loved, the UK felt like a step backward in every level of quality of life you could name. The list is longer than even what I've written here. You name it, FOR ME it is WORSE here than in the US.
This is my personal experience as I have lived it. Coming here is something I consider to be genuinely the worst most shattering mistake I ever made in my life. I'm "working poor" and can't afford to fix that mistake. I'm making the best of being stuck here -- trust me, I can hear voices saying "Doesn't sound like you are!" but this IS the best I can do.
The best I can do is keep waking up in the morning and NOT actually kill myself. Trust me, that's a mountain to climb. If you knew how much that was you'd give me a medal just for still drawing breath, the way I feel in this place.
PLEASE stay where you are. I LOVED your country. I had the best years of my life there, although certain moments, situations and people were not perfect, over-all it's a better place to be. Especially for my spectrum related issues. It helped me. I felt better. I did better. I'm dying here. This country is not as conducive to feeling okay. I would do anything to turn back time and still be there.
Americans seriously romanticize Britain. You have no idea. Modern reality is that it's a sh!thole. I'm absolutely not kidding. Everything about life here is harder, nastier, more physically wearying, more crowded, noisier, meaner. England is NOT a bowl of roses. I genuinely had a better life in YOUR country and I know whereof I speak.
Last edited by BirdInFlight on 06 Sep 2015, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
Sometimes your birthplace sucks big time simply because it’s your birthplace and you’ve spent way, way too much time there. Even if others who have moved there like it, it’ll still suck no end to you.
_________________
The red lake has been forgotten. A dust devil stuns you long enough to shroud forever those last shards of wisdom. The breeze rocking this forlorn wasteland whispers in your ears, “Não resta mais que uma sombra”.
A lot of people are posting about the climate. For a long time this is what I would consider a special interest for me. I could go to detail with it but I'll save you the wordwall if I can help it, apologies if this is too detailed for anyone to actually care about. The climate varies incredibly in the UK from place to place. Not quite to the extent of the USA, but that is a huge country. It's a lot more varied than you'd expect a small country to be.
So let's take rainfall. It rains a hell of a lot in the west, but not so much in the east. Here's an annual rainfall map:
The the highest extreme in rainfall is x10 the lowest. As someone who lives in that darkest green area (the least rainfall), it barely rains at all in summer.
Temperature and seasons also varies, though not to the extreme which is our rainfall. This basically sums it up without me going to stupid amounts of detail:
Extreme weather is possible, but less so than the USA. By that I mean more rare and less damaging. The biggest (though not only) one is flooding. A lot of houses are on floodplains and a lot of people are effected by flooding each year. Rivers can flood their banks onto the surrounding area, which, if it's covered in housing, can be a huge problem. The sea can also cause flooding. The rain can also cause flooding by raining a lot in a short period of time when the ground is already full of water so it has nowhere to go. But each area is at a different risk.
It can also snow and ice up in the winter, sometimes in the summer actually. But if it does snow in summer it usually melts fast. We don't tend to have very big temperature extremes - it doesn't get very hot or very cold that often. But if it does get stupidly hot we're not very good at dealing with it because not many places have air conditioning.
Sorry if this is irrelevant.
It's certainly quite racist, even in my area. The media over here is trying so hard to turn people against each other, it's sad really. Also, they are trying (depressingly, not too hard) to dumb everything down. Sometimes when I watch the TV, I want to hit my head against a wall, because the way they try to mislead people is so blatent, and I know fully well that most people are going to soak it all up like a sponge.
BirdInFlight's post was quite interesting, actually. People are generally miserable and distant here.
I feel that most people here are out to get what they want and doesn't give too hoots what happens to others. I don't know if that particular thing is British. British workmen are f***ing awful, a lot of them even make things life-threateningly dangerous. I can't believe there is no standards here.
The amount of stupidity and racism in Essex is shocking. I think the only reason I've encountered it far more in the last few years is simply because I've interacted with more people.
As for climate, I quite like it. I prefer to be warm and cosy indoors, and I like it when it rains. It makes the countryside here pretty too.
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Last edited by smudge on 06 Sep 2015, 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
People in the UK tend to be very passive aggressive as opposed to confronting. So let's say you cut a line, intentionally or unintentionally. Rather than confront you about it, they'll frown and make direct eye contact, they'll tut and roll their eyes, maybe say under their breath about how impatient you are or that "oh no I'm not queuing we're just all standing in a line for no reason", things of that nature.
Things about that:
https://twitter.com/SoVeryBritish
https://www.reddit.com/r/britishproblems
Also this tweet:
https://twitter.com/Channel4/status/636869296304422912
It's really hard for me to navigate because nobody in this country actually says what they mean, but I think that's the case in whatever country you're in. Just each one has a separate way of not saying what you mean.
At the same time, they're less likely to be overly friendly. The only time people are like that is when they're being condescending as*holes and speaking to you like a child. Most people speak to me like that when they first meet me. But our old people are blunt which is the funniest thing. Once they get to a certain age they don't give a flying f**k who they offend and often have very strong views. But a pissed off british person will be blunt.
Last edited by iliketrees on 06 Sep 2015, 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Then maybe we should choose a small enough country to emigrate en masse to so aspies become a majority there and we can have our way of saying what we mean.
_________________
The red lake has been forgotten. A dust devil stuns you long enough to shroud forever those last shards of wisdom. The breeze rocking this forlorn wasteland whispers in your ears, “Não resta mais que uma sombra”.
I live in the UK and don't recognise the negative image portrayed here, people down are here are very friendly and hospitable and are likely to talk to each other. Admittedly I live a long way from London and South East England.
There is also lovely scenery in many parts of the UK, including locally to where I am. Weather is variable but at least near the coast, there is a fair amount of sunshine especially in summer.
To be honest I wouldn't think there would be much hostility towards Americans.
I always try to see the better things in life, there are good and bad places everywhere, in the UK and in America, and is every part of the world, the only way you will know what it is like is to come here.
There is also lovely scenery in many parts of the UK, including locally to where I am. Weather is variable but at least near the coast, there is a fair amount of sunshine especially in summer.
To be honest I wouldn't think there would be much hostility towards Americans.
I always try to see the better things in life, there are good and bad places everywhere, in the UK and in America, and is every part of the world, the only way you will know what it is like is to come here.
Are you in Devon?
Britain used to be nice in the sixties, even inner London where I used to walk alone to school at four years of age.
Now it is horrid, too many people here now, so the roads are permanently blocked, too many different cultures all not interacting. Every week my local paper has reports of people stabbing each other in the local clubs, and where do you think you are going to live?
My neighbour told me her friend had to pay £700 a month for a bedsit!
Britain is still nice the further you get away from London, but you have to have an awful lot of money to buy a property. Property is cheap in some of the Northern cities, places where unemployment has driven the youth to behave dreadfully.
Back in the sixties, we had snow in the winter, and the summers were hot and sunny, now it just rains all year.
I hope you like the colour grey, because thats what colour the UK is now.
As soon as I retire, I intend to buy a house in Germany where the people are so much friendlier and I can buy a lovely house in the countryside for a sixth of what my pokey little flat is worth.
I'm from the UK. You don't have to worry about being hated for being American. The people who don't like Americans often say that because of the american government more than the actual citizens. Another thing is the culture is more loud and extroverted (stereotypically).
But I think you will certainly be accepted here if you ever moved.
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We become what we think about; since everything in the beginning is just an idea.
Destruction and creation are 2 sides of the same coin.
Now it is horrid, too many people here now, so the roads are permanently blocked, too many different cultures all not interacting. Every week my local paper has reports of people stabbing each other in the local clubs, and where do you think you are going to live?
My neighbour told me her friend had to pay £700 a month for a bedsit!
Britain is still nice the further you get away from London, but you have to have an awful lot of money to buy a property. Property is cheap in some of the Northern cities, places where unemployment has driven the youth to behave dreadfully.
Back in the sixties, we had snow in the winter, and the summers were hot and sunny, now it just rains all year.
I hope you like the colour grey, because thats what colour the UK is now.
As soon as I retire, I intend to buy a house in Germany where the people are so much friendlier and I can buy a lovely house in the countryside for a sixth of what my pokey little flat is worth.
You have a point.
If you want to live in UK don't go to London. Your right that you can live better for less in almost any other European country than britain...lol
@OP take heed of the risks as well as the cool parts.
_________________
We become what we think about; since everything in the beginning is just an idea.
Destruction and creation are 2 sides of the same coin.
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