What was your biggest culture shock going to Europe?

Imagine my disappointment when I went to the fanciest department store, and found that the selection was worse than the bargain basement of Zellers (the discount department of my youth). There was nothing I wanted, nothing that wasn’t decades out of style. My friend ended up getting a violin for a bargain, but otherwise, we were surprised and disappointed.

Later, in Prague, I was shocked again (well, disappointed is more accurate). My Canadian friend and I were excited to visit cathedrals but also to go shopping. We’d heard how ridiculously cheap things were in Eastern Europe. I imagined rows of luxury department stores, with all the things we had in the expensive stores in Canada, except at really cheap prices.

I visited Europe for the first time in the summer of 1993, Austria then the Czech Republic. Vienna pretty much conformed to my stereotypes of Europe. Nothing shocking, though I admit I was surprised at how tiny their front-loading washing machines were … and also their toilets. Instead of shitting into a bowl of water, like in Canada, you shit onto a slab (which is a lot stinkier, guys), then you flushed by pulling on a cord that came down from the ceiling. The flush was jet-like, which makes sense, as you don’t want to leave skid marks. Anyway, uh, moving on…

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Per the department store, I realized that in most cases, you get what you pay for. Um, except when it comes to food and beer … the 5 of us ate and drank for I think $3 CAD.

A bunch of things clicked into place for me that day:

I also suddenly understood the impact of trade embargoes in people’s daily lives

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I finally understood why teenagers brought jeans to the Soviet Union to barter with on school trips, why Levis were such potent currency in the Soviet Union days

I, in turn, was shocked by them. Not by their staring, which was weird but I kind of got it. It was their clothes. This was 1993 but they were wearing bell bottom jeans and clothes that were straight out of the 70s. Dark indigo denim in the post acid wash era of distressed jeans. And I could tell those very dark blue bell bottoms were their dressy jeans, for going out. I remember the women wearing a lot of heavy 70s-ish makeup.

I - ethnically Korean (it’s important) - ended up taking a road trip to Prague. There were 5 of us, me, a white Canadian woman, 2 Austrians and 1 German, men. On the way, we stopped at a cafe in Budweis (České Budějovice). In Vienna, nobody seemed to take notice of me. But in Budweis, by the time we sat down, the whole patio was starting at me. Not surreptitiously, but openly gawking. Like you might at a zoo animal. I have to assume it was because they’d never seen an Asian person before, and they probably wondered what I was doing with 3 blond European men.

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I learned that a lot of people, especially in rural areas, have never seen someone who isn’t like them ethnically. (I’m assuming Budweis is rural, there were a lot of ancient looking tractors on the road)

It was when I went to the Czech Republic (just months after it had ceased being Czechoslovakia) that I ended up shocking people, and was shocked in turn.