CULTURE SHOCK in SCOTLAND | 24 things that surprised me in Edinburgh after moving from Czechia

hello friends in this video we are going to talk about culture shock we are going to go through my little list of twenty-something things that I found surprising - you know either small or great extent when I move to Britain from my home country Czech Republic growing up I always thought that the Western media and school have prepared me for life in Britain you know it has been my dream for a long time so I have consumed many many books and TV shows and yeah now that I'm thinking about it that maybe all this Monty Python's Flying Circus wasn't the best thing to learn about English culture from but I mean it also kind of shows you what sort of humor to expect when you move here anyway I was a little dieter yes you might be coming in thinking that you are prepared for all the tea and push people and Spice Girls and football and yes you're gonna get some of that for sure but there's gonna be other things as well and I have talked to some of my friends who moved here from different countries some of them moved here from Czech Republic as well and even though we didn't really agree on all the culture shock because it always really depends on what's your you know country of origin I could definitely see that there's some overlap so I've included some of my friends points into my list as well okay let's get to the list accents and dialects there's so many in Britain and you know know just in Britain in Scotland in Edinburgh even just within Edinburgh I can probably think of like four or five accents and out of them maybe one of them is kind of easy to decipher for me or like feels like natural like I have studied for this I have studied to understand this language the rest is really taking me quite a long time to kind of get used to I know that for a lot of my friends the whole process of getting used to Scottish accents was so much easier because they spent a lot more time locals because you know maybe think of like a job where they are surrounded by people speaking Edinburgh accents but for me that wasn't the case so I am still battling this to Thursday I think that now I'm probably comfortable with like majority of Edinburgh accents but there will still be cabbies who will be trying to make conversation with me and I cannot understand them as we're kind of starting with the topic of language let's talk about the Edinburgh and Scotland specific words it's quite fascinating to me that because you are surrounded by people just using them in everyday language you're gonna pick up on them and then you're gonna go and use them with your let's say American friends and they will have no idea what you're saying to give you a couple of examples Joby its cran rank fish minging ballbag that's a favorite and Teddy you're probably know Teddy from some of our videos about see another linguistic issue is that sometimes you try to read out like a local name out but because so many local names are based in Gaelic you can't really use like English language rules on them it's just won't work to give you some examples Colborne Street mill guy I don't even know if I'm pronouncing these right looky here cool eh yeah like you're just gonna have to figure it out with the help of locals when you hang around Scottish people you will notice that they use the c-word a lot so we're gonna keep it family friendly and I'm gonna say it out loud but yeah if you're from a country especially an english-speaking country that doesn't take the c-word that's just this like fun replacement for words like mate or bro then you will probably be surprised by this and you know this is me trying to mentally prepare you for the shock it can be used in both negative way and positive way I hear my friends use it in a very loving way all the time I've been necessarily kind of like hear it as loving at first but you know you get used to it people will generally greet you by asking you if you're alright or like how are you doing this does not mean that they are actually interested in how you're doing they do not want to hear your daily experiences or you know half of your life story it is literally just the phrase you're just supposed to basically say like sometimes just how you doing back sometimes you just don't answer it seems so weird to me and still after eight years people ask me how I am doing and I will still try to answer honestly and I don't think they really care also sometimes when you deal with people in like a formal level so you know it might be like teacher student or client your service provider you will find that people generally use like like an extra level of politeness which um I guess it's something to expect when you're moving to Britain I think that everyone kind of sees Britain as a very polite nice country right but then suddenly when it's applied to your everyday life it might be surprising like your professor will tell you that you did a great job on a paper and then still gives you just 60 percent true sorry what I think is quite nice about British people in general is that they are quite respectful to your fashion choices it doesn't really matter to them if you're wearing your pajama bottoms to the supermarket or if you're wearing some sort of glamorous sequin and sequin to the cinema you know it's not really worth a double-take to them and I find that really relaxing it means that I can really kind of let go of worrying but like if I'm am I wearing too much makeup and also am I wearing - a little makeup it just doesn't really matter it seems I think that if people are judgmental they will not let you know which I think you know like if you like people honest then you might have a problem with that but I think I just you know if someone has a problem with me I would rather Knox know I don't know I just want to go about my day and have a good time in my secret on secret and full face of makeup and a wing now let's talk about food a tiny bit I'm not gonna say anything about how I expected British food to be to be disgusting and Scottish food to be just all fried wasn't really true I never really thought that British who would be bad and honestly if it's in many ways similar to Czech food so that wasn't a surprise what was a bit of a surprise to me was that there's curry everywhere Indian curry that is obviously the whole colonialist past brought a lot of interesting cultures back into Britain so apart from the traditional British food you will find things like Indian curry are also treated as a very traditional part of British cuisine and Indian curry takeaway is like the quintessential takeaway and in my opinion it's the best kind of takeaway I don't think I ever really had Indian curry more than once before I moved here and now honestly I wish I could have it at least once a week but I'm trying to have it maybe you want a month it's definitely a treat meal it's one of my favourite things and for some reason fresh milk is crazy cheap it's like a similar situation as with beer in Czech Republic I think that if suddenly fresh milk could look more expensive the economy would collapse so Edinburgh is technically a capital pop scene you probably know that Glasgow is the bigger city so Glasgow has more like business and more jobs and more industry and is more of like a political capital and thanks to that and thanks to not being that big its product half size of prod it's a capital that feels very much like a small town I would point out that there's just like so much physical space when you're quite introverted I think that it's very pleasant in Edinburgh that you're never really surrounded by that many people there's many areas that are fairly central that unless it's like touristy season or Saturday you will still feel like you know there's like five meters to the next person you know you have like a really huge sort of personal bubble and it's amazing and even princess treat so I compared to let's say Oxford Street in London or a lot of streets in Prague Princess Street is basically like a half Street so you know even though it gets busy and there's a lot of people it only has like one row of buildings and looks the other road to kind of close it off the other side is the gardens so it feels very airy and obviously you know there's like a volcano in the middle of the city there's a harbour there's a great beach there's like little sort of woodsy hills it's yeah it just doesn't really feel like a big ass European capital it just feels like a small town that has everything you might need from a city I don't think anyone should or will be surprised by Britain driving on the wrong side but what surprised me is that especially in Edinburgh the drivers seem quite careful and quite chill like in Czech Republic there's just so much honking and like aggressive driving and kind of fits like I want to be there as soon as possible and I don't care that I'm just creating this horrible sort of traffic jam with my anger and anxiety it doesn't really feel like it like you know people been grumpy while driving but you can't really see it on their driving also as a pedestrian you'll notice that drivers generally respect you and your needs to cross a road a lot more than in Czech Republic and you know other European countries really and that's nice I am still quite surprised by that I still have to wait until I see them stop while Simon just kind of like crosses without even looking at the car daredevil on the other hand if you want to rely on public transport and you're used to a city like Prague that has amazing public transport and getting something on it it's super fast and convenient and cheap if you move to Edinburgh you will notice that suddenly it's expensive and it's not reliable and I just feel like unless you live on the outskirts you will probably just give up using it all together after a couple of years I guess one of the problems is that the bus will only stop when someone needs to get on or off and due to that the timetables are basically more of a suggestion than something that you can rely on yeah pubs I never knew that pubs were such a cultural institution and such a great place to really chill they are one of the most cozy places in Britain there's like actual organizations that make sure that old traditional pubs don't get too renovated and that's amazing like you're not just like sitting by a table you know sticky floors everything smells of ale this is more of a like a cozy fireplace and an old armchair and cute puppies situation speaking of puppies if you moved to Edinburgh you will soon notice that the only two types of dogs that you will meet on the streets are Staffies and greyhounds and that's it all the other ones are just like a rare gem in the wild you might be expecting Edinburgh weather to be just bad and kind of miserable but in fact it just changes a lot and the winter days are really short that's one thing that I noticed the first year I was here and you know November you will start noticing that the sunsets are like 3:30 and suddenly your body just goes into this hibernation mode you will lose all your energy for the next four months on the other hand the summer can be quite fun because the days are so long and the festival means that there's a lot of street food all of the sudden which doesn't really happen outside of the festival your body is probably gonna generate the local more energy as well just because there's so much more daylight it's never really over like 22 degrees but you will notice that once it's over 17 people will just take their tops off and manage to get sunburned to within like the next four hours I don't know how they do it but good for them I guess for enjoying the one day of Roberts career summer so after having lived in multiple Edinburgh houses I noticed that's the whole double-tap situation is just only present this is mostly due to like the old plumbing system which is different from continental Europe and I guess the rest of the world it's quite frustrating because you always have to choose between like you know Shackleton's expedition to the north and Mordor and like if you're trying to create a nice mild temperature you just kind of end up like kind of like steel flapping the two streams together to create like a mass of survivable temperature water another thing about like everyday practicalities is that you're gonna notice that Scottish money is not the same as English money and also within Scottish money there's even different sets of banknotes because they get issued by like two or three different banks so not every ten pound note is gonna look the same but one of them has altars on it so that is the best one of them if you then want to travel to England sometimes you will have a bit of an issue especially if you want to avoid people if you're using one of those self checkouts at the supermarket sometimes it's not gonna take your Scottish banknote but if you then like call someone they will fix it for you legal tender and about using your Scottish money I have noticed then the shops here closed really early and they also open quite late basically the standard opening hours would be from 10:00 to 6:00 which I mean it makes sense from the sort of employer-employee point of view but it doesn't make much sense from the actual shopper point of view like if a place opens at 10:00 and closes at 6:00 and I work from 9:00 to 5:00 what am I supposed to shop I don't I don't get it [Music] thankfully any online shopping is very streamlined in the UK definitely a lot better online shopping situation here than in Czech Republic so if you move here you're probably start compensating for those like nice evening shopping trips by just spending load of money on Amazon and ASOS Royal Mail it's amazing everyone I've talked to who's not from Britain said that they were so pleasantly surprised by how much you can actually rely on Royal Mail as a service so like back in Czech Republic it's gonna happen to you all the time that you just sit at home waiting for your parcel and they come there they don't even bring the parcel they just like bringing two leaflets and you have to go and pick it up yourself anyway like honestly that's the case with like 40 percent of old postman in Czech Republic if you don't appreciate Royal Mail as a British person you definitely should like it could be so much worse also one thing that we agreed upon with my friends is that the British culture is very Western centric so it's just like its own thing with a lot of American stuff kind of added in for a bit of colour but if you talk to British people about let's say French cinema or Scandinavian children's books that you grew up on they generally don't have the same experience and that's the nice thing about living in continental Europe because you're so closely surrounded by other kind of smallish countries with really interesting cultures and Britain as an island doesn't really have that but I was surprised by that even though it does make sense I was surprised by how nobody knows like all those amazing French comedies from like these and 70s that I grew up on there's such like easy fun movies to watch and I thought all of the world knew those and that everyone knew and I also just thought that everyone had to take all it's like European literature studies in school but it's not really the case here so I think that's a bit of a bummer but I am on a mission to educate Simon about all those great european things if you have a European thing that's your favorite and you think Britons should know about it let me know in the comments below I fellow Europeans you wanna edit some stars in this show let's make our last point celebratory and talk about Hogmanay which is the Scottish New Year celebration in any other country that I know New Year's is basically just 31st and then being hungover on the first that's in your celebration right so Hallman a basically it takes about two or three days there's a big festival in the streets and traditionally Scots enjoy New Year's a lot more heavily than the rest of the world including England actually Scotland even like legally gets an extra day of work on the 2nd of January so yeah they get to drink heavily for an extra night all right those were my 20 something or maybe 20 depending on how we added this little points about what I got surprised about when I moved into Scotland obviously as always I am super curious to see if you agree or disagree with any of them and if you have any that I forgot about because again when I talk to my friends from other parts of the world like my friend from Latin America with some of her culture shocks she literally said the opposite of what I was feeling like this is probably quite obvious but coming from Latin America she thought that British people don't really use enough physical contact when like greeting each other and such and for me it's the opposite like when I was growing up in Czech Republic nobody really liked hugs and kisses you so when I moved here I kind of had to figure it out and I would lie if I said that I I've figured it out but I still kind of panic when someone comes in for the chicas I'm just like this is one or two I don't know let me know in the comments below if it this one or two okay okay thank you guys for watching this video I really hope you enjoyed it if you want to know more about my life here in Scotland and on my travels please go follow me on Instagram it is khaki blogged for my photos and khaki but just like here for my illustration and kind of like graphic design endeavors also don't forget that on my Etsy store I sell a whole bunch of Scottish themed pins and yeah support me and I will love you back immensely forever okay guys thank you again for watching I will see you see [Music]

Channel: Kakibot's Edinburgh Adventures!

Views: 69,946

Rating: 4.8168545 out of 5

Keywords: scotland, edinburgh, culture shock, moving to scotland, life in edinburgh, life in scotland, expat, moving countries, culture shock in scotland, scottish accent, scottish slang, gaelic, uk, britain, czech girl, czech youtuber, czech living in scotland, czechia

Id: mDLLHX6izaQ

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 21 2019