-Drinks served at room temperature only - their “Ice-Cold” beer = our mildly chilled. Had a draught of Coors Light from a non-sub-zero tap at the Maple Leaf Pub in Covent Garden and now understand why people don’t like Coors Light. Turns out that at any other temperature, Coors light is just pee in a glass.
-No tipping – after surviving off the casual generosity of others for most of my life, not tipping waitresses, cab drivers & aestheticians really stresses me out.
-Ordering food at the bar – so in England to get food you must decide what you want at your table, take note of the table number and order at the bar. I never take note of my table number, and there is ALWAYS mass confusion as to where my food is going when it comes out.
-“Ghost drivers” and left side of the road driving – since the driver is on the wrong side of the car here, for the first few weeks (and still a bit now) I always looked at the empty driver’s side of moving cars and would freak about how they were rolling away without drivers. Even scarier still is when there were children in the driver side passenger seat, or someone reading a book or something.
-Cabs are cheaper than the bus. Just saying.
-Calling home is the same price as calling locally – weirder still, every time I top up my pay-as-you-go cheapo phone I get a bunch of free “Globe Talker” minutes.
-Children at the pub – “You have a baby....at a bar...” everywhere. Also, pets. Dogs just wandering about in the bar – NBD. The other night we were at a pub in Gravesend and there was actually a cat just chilling on the chair beside us. Like it was no big deal.
-SMOKERS – BLECH! Everyone in Europe smokes. Someone should tell them that it is 2010 and they figured out a while ago that smokers die of lung cancer.
-English Breakfast includes beans and a half a tomato grilled and peppered. Also there is no real bacon. Back bacon only. It is bullshit.
-”you alright?” instead of “how are you?” – for the first month of living here I thought I was walking around all mopey or something because people kept asking me if I was alright.
-you have to turn on the hot water before you shower – the water heater needs to be flicked on before showers. And the plug-outlets also have switch on-switch off function.
-there are no mirrors in the bathrooms – or anywhere. Which lead me to believe that North Americans were super vain people. Until I met English girls who use their compacts to powder their nose at all times.
-no dryers for clothes – in a country where it rains, dryers are not a household appliance. So I have to hang my clothes on the line and dart home if it starts to rain (which inevitably, it will.)
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