I’ve written up a few differences I noticed in different countries. The first half of this was written while I was interrailing but I never uploaded it, and I’ve added a couple more about Germany to the end of that. There are many generalisations here, please take them with a pinch of salt as they are not scientific and based on an extremely small sample.
1) In Venice and Vienna, there’s drinking water provided everywhere (in Paris, there are some fountains around, though not as many). In Venice there are nice stone water fountains in all the main squares, and in Vienna there were big metal “drinking water” fountains. I don’t know why we don’t have this in England, though I have heard that some Tube stations have started to offer it, and when in England I have to walk into somewhere and ask them for water or find a toilet somewhere. I’m not sure if there’s some sort of lobbying not to provide it to encourage drinks sales or if there’s another reason we haven’t done it, or whether it’s just that there’s less demand for it because we don’t have hot weather with everyone being out in the city and in parks, but it’s great.
1b) This isn’t a cultural difference, just about a cool water bottle I got at the Venice event where they were handed out at the second checkpoint (I also got a free event tshirt, and the event was free anyway (though open to donations) and a tshirt from the host’s parkour association!). The bottles are made of plastic but not in bottle form, more like a flat-pack that inflates, so when they’re empty you can fold them up quite small. They also came with a clip to attach them easily to your bag or your belt. They had some spares so I took two more later on, and I’m considering seeing if I can buy a load in bulk with Oxford Parkour branding on them (an advantage of having run a parkour group is that you can use it to buy things you want yourself in bulk, like the custom tshirts I did).
2) Austrian trains are great. They’re much cleaner and quieter than
trains in England (and I’ve used trains quite a bit, intercity and
local) and just look better, but they also have free wifi (only one
of four train companies I’ve used in England does this). Even better are the displays they have all over the carriages, telling you the
time, the journey plan (all of the stations and when it reaches
them), international and local maps so you can see where you are, and
even what speed you’re going at (this one cruises at 230km/h)!I don’t
know why English trains don’t have this, all I remember are the
side-scrolling line of text which tell you next station.
3) I’m enjoying
cultural differences too. The Italians were quite relaxed, so when
they said “we’ll meet at 10” and actually arrived quite a bit
later, nobody cared. Being relaxed and chilled was quite nice, but
the flipside was that everything took awhile, like getting to the
fortress after the chase event: instead of doing things in an
efficient way, we waited about until the end and then organised who
was going where, walked a bit to get some food and waited around there,
etc. Funnily, one of the Germans was complaining about this quite a
bit, so I reckon they were much more used to efficiency!
Also in manner,
Italians are louder then English people – making lots of noise on
public transport (though I was with a protest group and a parkour
people) and generally talking more loudly. They also do things which
in English would be rude, like waving your finger right in front of
your mother’s face or shouting “No” when she misunderstood what
you were saying (in translating from English people). The Germans
were also a bit more blunt, one of them asking straight-up why
Davide’s dad didn’t have a bigger car (which in English would
definitely be rude). I found myself a victim of silly English
politeness too – being reluctant to ask for more food (though they
were great at insisting I ate anyway) and when Davide offered to
carry my bag for me I couldn’t take him up on his offer.
With
Australians, I noticed a slightly different sense of humour. British
humour (especially mine) can include making fun of and being rude to
people, which Americans tend not to understand; Australians are the
same, but in a slightly more overt and less subtle way, and their
‘banter’ tends to more be just insulting people whereas mine would be
more making a sly comment to metaphorically stab them in the back
(again, maybe a bit more me, but we agreed this was a general
different). German humour again had subtle differences, though
they’re pretty good at
verarschen
(taking the mic, literally making-an-arse-of), the ‘puns’ that Finn
described were slightly different to what a ‘pun’ is in English.
4) Though
parkour groups across the world are generally quite similar,
especially with clothing like baggy sweat-pants, the Italians had
something I hadn’t seen before: they all wore chalk-bags (from
climbing), little pouches which tie on like belt-strings with
drawstring tops, to keep their phones/wallets/etc in.
5) Paying to use
the toilet. Maybe this is the flipside of free water, but all public
toilets cost, usually 50c but sometimes 1 euro, even in a train
station. We’re used to having free public toilets in England, though
I think lots of them have been shut recently following all the cuts
(“efficiency savings”). I don’t really mind as I don’t expect to
use a toilet for free, and they are in much better condition than the
ones in Britain because of it.
6) In Paris, a park I walked through had loads of people jogging round it. Loads. More than I’d seen in Hyde Park in London (though that was bigger, I guess). I reckon this was because French food is so good they prefer to eat more of it and exercise a bit more.
7) German lectures. At the end of each lecture, instead of clapping, people tap on the desks. People are happier to speak up and get involved in the lecture than in England, be it shouting from the back that the lecturer is too quiet or in answering questions (unlike Oxford, where a question gets met with silence). People also talk to each other more, sometimes making it hard to hear.
8) German bluntness*. Some people mistake this for rudeness, but it isn’t rude, just different. I was in the way of a waitress in a restaurant and she just said “Move please”, whereas in England they would wait a bit and then, more politely, say “Excuse me, could I get past?”. It’s kinda refreshing that people just say what they mean and the Germans don’t take offence. On the other hand, they are more formal in some cases, like using a polite “you” form (like English used to have thou/you, Germans still have it) on some occasion, so they aren’t entirely ‘impolite’.
9) The Pfand. Germany, in its general environmentally friendly attitude, has a national system of bottle recycling. Every bottle has a Pfand on it (a deposit) of somewhere between 5p and 25p, depending on bottle type, which you can get back by returning it to anywhere which sells bottles (to pass onto whoever runs the bottle system, so they get the money back too). The bottles get taken back, cleaned, refilled and relabelled. It’s awesome that they have this scheme, as throwing away bottles is a huge waste. The plastic 500ml bottles for water/coke etc are denser, thicker plastic.
As well as encouraging individuals to recycle, it creates an economy for recycling too. Homeless (or poor) people can earn money by finding and returning the bottles, so they go through bins, collect abandoned ones and sometimes even go to student parties (big outdoor ones, ie people drinking in the park) to collect the bottles (so the students kind-of donate the bottles, but they probably couldn’t be bothered to return them themselves anyway). This is good as it means more is recycled and that these poor people have a bit of an income from doing something good! (On a downside, I have seen homeless alcoholics collecting bottles, then spending that money straight on alcohol. But at least that means they aren’t begging for alcohol money).
10) Language. The German language is great (it’s also painful to learn with words having genders and the word for “the” changes with case) with its words. I also sometimes find it amusing. In its formality, the lecturer will start each lecture by saying “ladies and gentlemen…” to a class of students, and sometimes refers to them as “Mrs Colleague” (well a similar word) in asking them to answer questions. I got a message from a friend inviting me round to a party/gathering a few days ago which said “you are heartily invited…”.
Another source of amusement is compound nouns: nouns are like lego bricks that can be stacked together to make new words. For example: a food processor is a kitchen-machine; an escalator is a rolling-stairs; gloves are hand-shoes. It is fairly logical, and because German has about half as many words as English (probably in part because it is so logical), there’s often repetitions I find funny. For example, the sentence “I tie my shoelaces” is “I bind my shoe-bindings”.
I laugh at these things, and the Germans don’t understand what’s funny. It doesn’t sound silly to them, it just makes sense.
* I know this was mentioned earlier, but the first one I noticed while interrailing and this one is what I’ve noticed actually in Germany.