UK Expats - what do you miss from home?
Victoria Sponge
Posts: 16,645 Forum Member
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To people from the UK who've moved elsewhere, or maybe just travel internationally a lot for work - what do you miss from home? Whether it's food items, services, weather(!), anything. What, to you, is better from back home than in where you reside? And which things are better where you are now? Where did you move to? How often do you go back to the UK?
My Brasilian best friend and her English husband, who now live in Brasil, miss baked beans soooooo much! Tinned food is practically unheard of here, and no one even knows what baked beans are. When I came I brought them two tins of baked beans (would've brought them many more if it wasn't for my pesky, stingey 23kg baggage allowance). I also brought them their requested intant gravy and instant custard. Things we totally take for granted in the UK.
One really annoying thing here is banking. The banks close at 3pm I think, and cash machines are NOT 24hrs...seems crazy and inconvenient to me, but I'm a spoilt UK citizen where things are a bit more organised.
My pal and hubby also say they miss Primark and Tesco (the supermarkets here are a bit dirty-looking and small, and they don't have uniformly-selected fruit and veg like we are used to, making them look 'inferior' in my eyes, even though they are really not).
Over to you.
My Brasilian best friend and her English husband, who now live in Brasil, miss baked beans soooooo much! Tinned food is practically unheard of here, and no one even knows what baked beans are. When I came I brought them two tins of baked beans (would've brought them many more if it wasn't for my pesky, stingey 23kg baggage allowance). I also brought them their requested intant gravy and instant custard. Things we totally take for granted in the UK.
One really annoying thing here is banking. The banks close at 3pm I think, and cash machines are NOT 24hrs...seems crazy and inconvenient to me, but I'm a spoilt UK citizen where things are a bit more organised.
My pal and hubby also say they miss Primark and Tesco (the supermarkets here are a bit dirty-looking and small, and they don't have uniformly-selected fruit and veg like we are used to, making them look 'inferior' in my eyes, even though they are really not).
Over to you.
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I miss some stores and some brands but i've gotten over that. There is the internet if i'm really desperate.
I also used to miss Cadbury chocolate. Not anymore. It's a disgrace what it's become.
Fish and chip craving comes about twice a year.
Mr Kipling cakes.
As the poster above said, Cadburys chocolate till it changed. Blech!!
Tesco fizzy, flavoured water. I drink a bottle a day when I'm home.
Seeing the lambs in Spring. I don't know where they hide them here...
Chatty people in shops.
Walking on the beach. I hate being landlocked!
Same with breakfast cereals. Masses of choice back home. Here there's a handful. They don't even have Weetabix, lucky I brought some with me.
Also, they do not have Indian spices to buy. So I brought a shit load of spices with me and threw a large dinner party, serving up my home made chicken curry.
I guess I miss being able to communicate properly with people (language barrier) but I'm slowly learning to speak Portuguese and I hope to be fluent one day. That would be my dream.
I miss M&S! Food wise nothing comes close here, the selection and quality of food at the supermarket just doesn't compare.
Normal weather! Fed up with the winter -20 with -35 windchill gets annoying after a while.
Cheap flights to Europe - anything the same distance here is just a lot more.
I don't think I could live anywhere that cold! Where are you?
Canada:(
There's an English food shop in Stuttgart but it's very limited and hair-curlingly expensive but sometimes you just have to treat yourself to some smokey bacon crisps and Idris ginger beer.
As a rule, it's usually the small things which irritate me most because it seems like there's no good reason why they should be different.
Stuff like a lot of supermarkets in Europe not having a decent variety of cheese or bread, garages expecting you to pay for fuel before you stick it in your car and bars getting all confused when you try to pay after buying a drink.
Australia otherwise had everything I would typically miss in Britain, from full English breakfasts to pub grub and they have some decent brands of tea - Madura being one. Television there is piss poor but I barely watch any TV and I used a VPN if I ever wanted to watch something on BBC iPlayer and Netflix.
I miss Spring. There really is no Spring here in Ontario and what few days we might get are muddy, grey and ugly.
I miss friendly people. If you try to strike up a conversation with a stranger here they think you're mad.
I miss the dawn chorus.
I miss fish and chip shops.
What I miss least is the banking system in the UK!
I hear you!
Are you moving to Brazil? Sounds awesome!
Yes in the Caribbean they are shocked that we are able to fill up cars before paying. I don't think it could work there!
I never planned to move here but this is my second visit in three months, I love this place and it feels like home. I'm liking the idea of living part time here and part time back in the UK. I could possibly have a business here (small town in Brasil) making cakes, there's a big market for it and many of the locals are saying that no one currently offers cakes like mine (going by the portfolio I've shown them).
The main thing is, in order to even think about having a working life here, I must learn to speak enough Portuguese to communicate. My friend says my progress is pretty good though. But, we'll see. Also, I'll have to ask the Brasilian consulate whether they'll even let me come for extended periods.
And the petrol...in Brasil one doesn't even have to leave one's car to fill up. Just hand them your card, tell them how much R$ worth you want, then they fill it up. I think that's pretty cool.
I've never tried it for fear of the confusion it might cause but I always wonder what'd happen if you paid, say, £50 and then found you could only get £35 of fuel into your tank.
It did happen once, in Libya, but the guy in the petrol station wasn't the sharpest tool in the box and he just carried on dispensing fuel, allowing it to run down the side of the 4x4 onto the floor, apparently until he'd dispensed a whole $10-worth.
When we were in the US we were told that if you couldn't get the amount you had paid for into the tank then they would refund you the difference.
Yes, they were more than likely black beans, not haricot beans, but they were baked in a sauce.
It was a while ago now, probably 20 years ago.
I'm betting that asking for a refund of the difference in somewhere like Egypt or Kenya would lead to a sudden inability for the garage owner to understand English.
I miss the sense of humour too.
And obviously a decent cuppa. That goes without saying. It's weird, you can buy all the good English tea out here, but the water is just too hard. Even if you filter it, it still tastes funny. And the milk is so creamy it all goes horribly wrong
Have they tried making their own baked beans? It's really easy and they taste just like (or better than) the tinned kind.