When hearing the term ‘culture shock’ most people think of the big things like a significant difference between the culture someone grew up in and the society someone tries to immerse themselves into. The contrast between human behaviors, food, traditions, or holidays, and remarkable changes in the way of life, and you may suppose – this should be easy to prepare for, do research, or read some articles while trying to understand the reasoning behind all of those things and ‘you are set’. But have you ever wondered what makes the experience so unpleasant?
Being on another continent or even in a different country can be difficult. Leaving your country to live in another one takes a lot of courage. And even while knowing that you are not the only one who made the decision, you can practically see it all around you, it feels heavy, almost like everything changed. Because it did, and even if you want to, it may not return. People choose to leave their past lives behind, forget almost everything they know, and start something completely new, all that to seek a different, maybe better life somewhere else. They pursue their dreams by putting themselves out there, stepping out of their comfort zone again, and they think it is the hardest it can get. But then it hits. The culture shock. You imagined that nothing could surprise you anymore, you came here completely unaware of everything, but now you know, everything is clear.
Imagine a thirty-hour day trip, your luggage is lost, probably stayed in your home country, but maybe it is somewhere you have had a layover. Maybe in Frankfurt where that very day was a flood or anywhere else, but now you are too tired to care. You finally get into the hotel room, and tomorrow you have another long travel day. You walk into the bathroom, get into the shower, see a different shower handle, but think nothing about it and try to turn it on, and nothing happens. You start to wonder, is it broken or am I just too tired and my brain stopped working? You stand under the shower head, fighting the shower handle, trying to get even a drop of cold water, but again nothing happens. You are about to give up and go to sleep, but you give it one more chance. After 10 minutes of standing in the bathroom, struggling to turn on the water, it finally works. You feel relieved, but at the same time annoyed, and just simply tired of everything. And you start to wonder if this is how the first hours look like, how will the rest of the year unwrap?
The shower is just an example of how things can differ, and cause first impressions to be quite different from what we expected. Sometimes, we may overlook small actions that can have a significant impact on how others perceive us in the future, potentially compromising their cultural shock experience. Small things, like taking a shower or doing things differently, can be overwhelming and ruin the experience. That’s why I don’t like American showers.
