illusions?

[winterbadger]

So, I'm curious. For those of you who live, or have lived, in the UK having come from the US (or in the US having come from the UK), what surprised you most? By which I mean not so much economic things or climate things, but what did you believe/expect/look forward to about the place you were going that turned out to be completely wrong? I'm thinking first of all of disappointments (shattered dreams? ;-) but also of unexpected pleasant surprises.

I know, I know, in [X] they don't have [Y foodstuff] and the cost of living is [better/worse] and it always [rains/is sunny], which is just awful. But on a somewhat deeper or more abstract level, what was really different that you didn't expect?

(crossposted to some communities)

Comments

[snolan.livejournal.com]

I lived in Suffolk, England from 1967-1969 and again from 1971 -1974.
I visited England in 1992 and several times since then.

Surprises visiting England as an adult:

• driving on the Left is more natural to me even though I learned to drive on the right
  
• drivers in England are vastly more proficient than the vast majority of American drivers
  
• people in England, including drivers hidden inside automobiles and anonymous, are vastly more polite
  
• the roads in England are vastly better in the 1990s and today than they were in 1974 (used to take 4+ hours to get from Woodbridge/Bentwaters/Ipswich to London, now it takes 4 hours to get from the same place in Suffolk all the way to South Wales!)
  
• more people walk regularly, and as a result there is a much lower proportion of people who are overweight
  
• corn syrup has had an impact on the UK though, and more people are heavy there than were in the 1970s
  
• there is a freaking mobile phone store on every corner and every other business on every block; there are in fact more mobile phone stores than there are people; this is a great mystery to me - as simple math would suggest that everyone who has one already has a mobile
  
• I love traffic circles, they simply make more sense than stop lights in most situations
  
• eating in restaurants is expensive, but fabulous Indian, Chinese, Spanish Tapas, and Tex-Mex are no more expensive than fast food - so you can eat really well now; fish and chips is still a good bargain, though good places are getting harder to find
  
• people in England have many, many layers to their relationships; on a tour/visit you are unlikely to meet the real person; instead meeting their public face
  

Surprises returning to the States after a short visit to England:

• driving on the right-hand side is difficult and unnatural
  
• people cut you off in traffic and seem to delight in it
  
• there is an open frankness to money that is a welcome relief to the confusing nuance of social class in England
  
• Puritanism and it's ugly, shameful legacy are still strangling creativity and freedom of expression in the States
  
• There are no where near as many "pert, spankable bottoms" as there are in England
  

I started a whole list of my impressions returning to the states as a child, then removed them as I don't think that is really what you were after.