First Days With Intercultural Shocks

When you visit a foreign country, as soon as you cross the border, I’m sure you immediately recognize that you’re abroad, even if you had you-r eyes covered all the time and have suddenly opened them. Each country has something by which it differs from your home country. And it doesn’t matter if it’s in Europe, America or Asia. It has a different style of architecture, landscape, people, language, climate or standard of living. It has a different culture. Different culture means people with different mentality and life approach, different habits, food, and let’s say overall way of living. And once you start traveling, you find out that what works in your country, may not work in another one. Something that’s just a normal thing in your country, doesn’t necessarily have to be common somewhere else. I call these moments of realization “intercultural shocks” and here are a few which I ran into in Belgium.