UK Culture Shock | 20 Things that shocked me as a South African in LONDON 

I apologise to those superstitious people for when I opened the umbrella indoors 😅, and for weirdly emphasising Uk when I was meant to say London. Hope you enjoy the video! Check out my other one for some updated differences.

If you can't find a decent t-shirt for under £27 - you're simply going to the wrong shops !

Love the video and the editing x

A park is a formal laid out planned public space. Most of the parks and squares of London were designed in the Georgian period (18th century). A common is a throw-back to feudal times which ended with the Agrarian revolution of the early 17th century when most of the common land was enclosed and incorporated into larger, more mechanised, farms. Common land was land set aside for the use of serfs for pannage and grazing of their own livestock and, originally, for growing household crops in assigned strips. Every manorial estate in England would have had common land. What you see in London today is a mere echo of what used to be.

does not rain much in fact.

Hope you don't mind me saying this, but I sat here for 13 minutes fascinated by your facial expressions and your SA accent. That's neither a criticism nor a complaint, just an observation. I found it most enjoyable.

hello Julie, lots of people do use umbrellas in London when it's rainy, but some people don't bother to use them if they don't have to walk far to where they are going. Yes, it can be very wet and windy in London and certainly, a lot of umbrellas get blown inside out and often wrecked by gusty winds. Best to buy a good sturdy windproof umbrella. unfortunately, most tourists use flimsy umbrellas in London even local people not realizing how strong the winds can get. Looks like the wind trashed your umbrella Julie x

The water in London is very hard, but in the north east of England where I live, the water is soft. It just depends where in the UK you live I guess.

Interesting video and you should do more as you spend more time in the UK. It's important to not be too London centric in your observations though. Other parts of the country offer a very different experience.

nice video, yeah you are right that the official difference between parks and commons is that parks have a fence around them and commons do not

we do have 'civvies day' in the UK its called Mufti day here where you pay a £1 to turn up to school in your own clothes.

The reason I don't use a brolly is main because a) I can move faster without it, b) I'm short so would more than likely take someone's eye out with it and c) whenever I've used one it blown inside out and ended up broken.

I've spent some time in South Africa and the fast food comment is fair Terrace housing was built all at the same time as a single project. Try primark for cheaper clothes.

Did you notice how our water goes the other way? Like when the water goes down the plug hole it goes clockwise whereas in the southern hemisphere it goes anticlockwise.

No umbrella. Use a water proof top with a hood and wear a baseball cap under the hood. The peak of the cap helps keep the rain out of your eyes and pushes the side of the hood out of the way when you turn your head so you can see with both eyes

The people who wander around in t shirts in the snow are either drunk (beer is a surprisingly good insulator) or from the north, where it gets way colder than London. People from Newcastle are particularly famed for wearing very little in cold weather. The lack of privacy thing is why everyone in the UK has net curtains. They really help.

The traffic light crossing where you push a button and cross when the green man is lit, is called a Pelicon crossing. It's an acronym for PEdestrian LIght CONtrolled. Normal traffic light junctions have the same buttons, but those lights change based on the built in timers. Pressing the button on those doesn't make the traffic stop any sooner.

Loved the list nice content please do more videos and enjoy the U.K

It can take quite a while to settle and know where to shop within a budget. My t-shirts don't cost £27 and I don't go for flimsy dubious mixed fabric ones. As you've noticed umbrellas are mostly a waste of time. A subtle shower proof jacket/coat will deal with most drizzles and a waterproof for heavier stuff. They go all out with terrace housing here many built in the Edwardian and Victorian times. I was used to what you call people here call bungalow type homes in the Caribbean but moved to newer townhouse style places which some weren't so sure about because they're a row of houses. They only have up 2-5 in a row though.

Love the weird accent and ear rings. South Africa has many advantages for the good life. However it also has barbed wire on top of the garden wall and a neat notice on the front door proclaiming armed response .

My school had non-uniform days you would pay £2 for once every few months? not sure if it was common

I am not sure in London but in my area I often like to get some of my clothes from charity shop, shirts are about 8 or 10 pounds or cheaper, much cheaper than the clothes in our clothes shops :) though also London is quite expensive compared to the rest of the UK so if you traveled out of London you'd find things were a bit cheaper.

Y’all got similar accents! Thanks for sharing JV!

Really interesting. Sometimes it takes someone else to point out what’s in front of you.good video.

What you showed as London Bridge is actually Tower Bridge. As someone who has been to South Africa I can tell you there are things we saw, did not shock, but we saw some major differences, the French have a saying "Viva la Difference". As to feeling safe, and the fence bit, we stayed at a B & B in Sunset Beach near Cape Town, we had to know a code number to get through the gate. The Africaans lady told us there would be armed guards patrolling round the estate every 15 mins. We stayed at Rorkes Drift Lodge, it was a sort of a Tree Lodge, we came out of our room one morning the was a Black cleaner with a broom, she stopped what she was doing, took a pace back and bowed her head till we went past her. We went to Pretoria, all the people there were mainly Black Business men, in a restaurant whilst we were eating, one of these men shouted at one of the Black Serving girls, we could see that this was the norm. We went to Isandlwana and was given a talk by an Africaan Guide, his audience were all white tourists, during the talk he said "These Blacks are all decendents of Hunter Gatherers and they have not changed. The Zulu who guided us down the Survivours Drift from the battlefield was lovely and asked if we wanted to be called Mr & Mrs Thomas, as he had been told, we said no Judy and Des woulde be ideal, we got on very well.

Pelican or Pedestrian crossing was introduced in 1969 i work on one in Grimsby seeing kids across the road. A Zebra crossing is different as you have to waiting for the traffic to stop before you crossing the road.

I have never paid £27 for a t-shirt. I've never paid more than a fiver.

Lol, it’s funny listening to foreigners views of our normality. I feel the same when I go abroad. Foreigners do weird things! 😁

Hi just a quick question , ..am thinking of working in the UK ,..can you please tell me which visa did u applied for and how long did they respond back. Like please tell me the whole process of which you came through.

You sort of answered your own question for the first point!.... I've given up on umbrellas, wind and rain go hand in hand in most parts of Britain, I've had many poor old mangled umbrellas, so I just don't bother now!😂

Lovely to hear the SA accent again. Don’t price in Rands! It just doesn’t compute. The moment you’re paid in pounds you realise how inexpensive things are .. out of London! Love the long Summer evenings. Get some blackout blinds for your bedroom.

lols the waiting button are there on some of the robots, i have used it before... the funny part is that it was even in the rural area

😲 You opened an umbrella indoors!! Are you trying to put a hex on yourself?

A lot of the sirens you hear are training sessions. Where i work everyday at around the same time an ambulance drives down the same road with full blues and twos.

London and Cape Town both have around 100 rainy days per year, with London having 20% higher annual rainfall amount.

we have walking to school in south africa, we also have streets with shops only. Pretoria central has them

T-shirts here, in Wales where I live cost about £3 . Terraced houses , the reason they are all the same . They are built by the same firm to the same design . London is one of the four most expensive cities in the world to live in . Privacy, yes we have privacy , once you close your door , you have privacy . Rain, we gets weeks, one after another without rain . Last year it was about 8 or 10 . Racial mix, there are literally hundreds of peoples living in London from different counties . It is possible to hear 200 different languages , just walking down the road . The rest of the country is very different to London . Go and stay in a B&B, ( not a hotel ), in a pretty little village , there are plenty of them and visit the local pub . There is always one of the locals who would be glad to chat to you .

When I moved from Yorkshire to the south i noticed a huge difference in the water. depends on local geology, but the Yorkshire water was soft soft soft. In Essex where I live I considered it barely drinkable when i moved here. I'm perfectly happy with it these days but just saying that now all water is the same

Nearly everything is more expensive in London you will find that if you get out of London nearly everything is twice the price You must also understand London is not the UK It's nothing like the rest of the UK you make it sound like as if it's the same all over the uk its not

#14, I suffer with dry air too, put an old ceramic mug on top of the radiator and put a little water in it.

You will be surprised, but people who wear shorts in winter are definitely South Africans or Australians

We do (or did) have casual day in school, just not every week (or month).

I enjoyed the video, but that's Tower Bridge at 8:45.

My opinion you only lived in the burbs whilst in south Africa . I come from the township and our schools have cafeterias not all kids carry lunch we also have long streets with various shops and in most townships there is no privacy there are now houses built like flats And it does feel uncomfortable not to mention houses that are too closed to one another . the only boring thing here is crime and poor public service. Townships are more developed I think If you only lived in one part of south Africa you will get culture shock in other countries. UK is weird though because people hardly greet each other whereas here at home we greet and know each other .

I enjoyed the video, but I do wonder where you're buying your t-shirts. I certainly wouldn't pay over £5 for a t-shirt. We most definitely do have civvies days at school. They're called Mufti Days. Keep up the good work.

Several major trauma hospitals in Central London. Also Lonfon gas rain about 1 in 3 days and is one of Europe's driest capitals at 500m.

Says a lot about the current safety of South Africa .

Terraced houses were built by mill/ coal mine owners originally for the workers. This was before even the bike was affordable so people had to walk to work.

I'm trying to place your accent. You've obviously attended a high-quality expensive school (perhaps private) which leads you to speak so intelligently and articulately, to the extent of sounding 'posh'. Many years ago, I lived in Durban, Natal (now, of course, Kwa-Zulu Natal), which was essentially British-English speaking, and I wonder if your origins are in that province. A very animated video, to be sure, with some good observations. Totsiens, Robert, UK.

We have open spaces in South Africa.. I have family in UK and brother in Ireland, and cousins.. My brother says Ireland is expensive..

Schools in the uk do have none schools uniform days .

originally commons were grazing land that anybody could loose their livestock

I winced when you opened the umbrella indoors.

Interesting set of differences. Different from the usual issues raised by foreign visitors. I live in a terraced house and I have good neighbours each side of me but you do have to take this into account because as you say there is less privacy in this housing.

Rain in London is a weirdly popular misconception not backed up by rainfall stats. Why don't people in London carry umbrellas all the time? Because it only rains for just over 100 days a year which is almost exactly the same as Cape Town and less than New York, Rio, Sydney....

So you answered number one - they don't carry umbrellas. If you do they get turned inside out and broken...

My kids are in primary school and we have civvies day. It’s called ‘mufti’ day and they dress in their normal clothes and bring some money in to give to charity

You paid R10? We used to pay like R5.

We are used to rain,.we are not made of sugar. As for T shirts £5 max Primark or the markets even Asda supermarket sells clothes. London is not England I live in Hampshire beautiful beaches the new forest

Some one tell her about Primark!

I currently live in Bridgwater, Somerset and I get plenty of privacy. I was born and raised in Bristol and again I had plenty of privacy. Please don't judge the rest of England, or Scotland or Wales as the same as London. I think you will be shocked in the differences' especially in some of the uks other cities or towns

Your in London live with it,outside London your cost of living will go down by 10% .

You speak beautifully

8:44 Tower Bridge, not London Bridge.

What do you have instead of the wait button? I always buy cheap as well - London is more expensive than the rest of the UK. What's weird about walking to school and back? I live in Lincolnshire and I had a 20 minute walk. There are a few places in the UK that public transport doesn't reach. We have non-uniform days in primary and secondary schools, usually at the end of term, but we don't pay anything. Schools and a lot of work and public places have canteens, but you can still take your own lunch. Have you thought of turning you radiators down? The picture is of Tower Bridge, not London Bridge. You can't drive to high streets because they are older than the car. If you don't have high streets, where are your shops? There night not be privacy in London, but there is around the country.

The rain and wind dont mix.... and that is some dodgy brolly you have there... those brollies wont last through a sneeze ..😁 .x

Rains all the time? I worked in London for 7 months and walked from Blackfriars station to the office and back every day. It never rained on me.

I think you will find it does not rain ALL the time

Dont try to compare london with the rest of the uk ,its like a diffrent country, commons where i live are where any one can graze there animals .tee shirts are about £5 and we have soft water from springs

The reasons why we don't have " civvies " day any more here is because people used this time to show off their clothes but parents who don't have as much money can not afford to spend as much on their children and fights always start so using your own clothes was stopped like most of europe as well , don't worry about these 20 things as when you have been here a while you will wonder what was the fuss about . To help you understand why things are a bit crowded here look up how many times the UK can fit into RSA plus remember 65m people live here

It's nice to hear your views on England, but remember that England isn't London... When you've traveled a bit I'd like to hear more x

Don't know where in South Africa you came from. I grew up on a through road, emergency vehicles would come by all the time. There used to be these small shops lining the streets in Pretoria CBD, but times have changed. As for the privacy, fences and gates weren't always a thing in SA, many people didn't have them, but as crime started to rise people started putting up fences, these were wire fences, later concrete, and bricks, then palisade fencing came.

Found Nandos to be of equivalent quality, they generally overcook it though.

There is a reason for walls, fences and gates in SA, intruders...

You’re right about the high street….but they are dying out now…no parking that’s so true…but they are medieval..they were great when everybody walked ,but then in the last 60 years we all bought cars..

£27 for a t shirt? Try a couple of quid.

I don't understand why you call these things 'shocking'. Is an ambulance supposed to wait quietly in an emergency?

That is TOWER BRIDGE not London Bridge

Go to marks and spencer for a quality t shirt..

A lot of these things are literally just London, "civvies days" as you call them do happen, the water in from the midlands down seems to just be horrible, I'm from the North and the water is lovely. Hah fast food places have a lot of regulations here which prevent a lot of the "special" stuff that makes them taste better, they're slightly not as bad for you. I wear shorts and sandals in winter, my rule is if the snow is touching my toes I'll wear shoes.

Civies days DO exist here, but it`s called Mufti.

You got right mugged off 27 nicker🤣

I am "the shorts guy" 😂 It is simply almost never cold in England, maybe there is like one or two days per year with temperatures below 0, but that is it 😂

I find it strange that people who come to these islands feel the need to complain about the weather. Usually it is Americans that find the weather in Britain a challenge. It is as if no one ever looks at a map before they come here. It would be better if they looked at a globe just to see how high up the world that this country is. We are on the same latitude as Moscow and Quebec, and everyone knows what the winters are like there. The only reason we don’t have winters of -20 to -70 here is because the Gulf Stream runs up the Channel and Irish Sea. But look at the east coast on a map and you will see above us is the Arctic Ocean and when it gets to off the north of Scotland it goes through a name change and is then called the North Sea. Still just the Arctic Ocean by another name. In winter the temperature of the North Sea is 0 c to 4 c in summer it is 13 c to 18 c. You don't last long in these waters, but it’s good for fish. Because we are so far north that is the reason why in the summer dawn is around 0300 hrs in the morning and dark comes around 22 00 hrs at night. Of course the reverse is true in winter, night fall is around 1600 hrs and dawn is about 0900 hrs in the morning. As for the rain, the prevailing wind comes off the Atlantic accompanied by the Jet Stream and brings with it the storms and hurricanes from America. Yes it would be nice to see a bit more sun, but hey - such is life; it is what it is!

"London Bridge" That is tower bridge :)

And properties dont have to have armed guards, high walls and electric fences.!

Lived in London for four very long years. Now I'm in proper England and much happier. On fast food. It's just gross food full stop. Much better to eat proper contemporary Briþish cuisine. So much diversity and choice of food influenced from all over the world

We do have civvies day but we call it mufti day.

You are being very London centric.

Um...civies days. We call them mufti days and pretty much every school - both primary and secondary does them.

£27 for a t-shirt? Where the hell are you shopping? Also. "It takes an hour"? People in Liverpool, 2.5 hrs away, or Scotland, upto 7 hrs away, spit out their tea in unison

Hi guys I realised I made a few mistakes in this video but I just wanted to clarify what I said about the cafeterias - the food given is included in school fees so it’s not free and it could be very different between public and private schools. Also in South Africa we also have Tuck Shops where you can go and buy school lunch but it’s not quite the same thing, they’re not like full on meals

And another thing (if you'll forgive the cliché): London is London. England is England. Please do NOT confuse the two !

And oh most pupils do walk from home to school its not a culture shock at all

Julianne. I've lived in the UK for over 40 years, after being born and raised in SA for the first 30 years of my life. While I can just barely discern that you sound faintly South African, it seems to me that most people back in SA wouldn't hesitate to identify you as English. Anyhow and be that as it may, welcome to the UK and enjoy assimilating into British society.

Civvies days are getting expensive, i paid R5 for it.

a lot of things on your video comes from space. Britain is a small island and when we were colonising the world, we could have greater space for building houses and claim a lot of ground for garden areas.

I love that south Africa accent

It is very unlucky to put your umbrella up indoors.

The water you drink in London has been ‘used’ about seven times 😂😂😂😂