Reverse Culture Shock

Hello chaps,

As some of you will know, I recently returned to England for a short stint in order to blow away a few cobwebs. I’m not sure exactly how to word this one, so forgive my muddled syntax for a moment – it’s like that most of the time anyway, let’s face it! This is going to turn out to be another cultural observation, but I hope that both groups of readers (Russian and English) enjoy learning about the other.

I must say, I had a hearty dose of what is termed “reverse culture shock”, which was a huge surprise. On arriving at the airport in St Petersburg, there were stacks of Brits returning to England, who clearly hadn’t spent as much time as I had in Russia. I do not mean this as an affectation; they were probably just on business for a week or a short holiday – rather than living out here for 3 months. Why do I know this? They smiled at me. Readers, despite being English, I have forgotten how to smile as falsely as a British person! The realisation struck me square between the eyes when they looked all shocked and offended when I didn’t smile back. I’ve talked previously about the cultural differences between Russians and Brits when it comes to smiling, but I’ve definitely gone native on that one.

Frankly, I’ve become rather disillusioned about English people. We have a lot more fakery than the Russians in terms of sentiments. The English smile when meeting someone new for the first time is more often than not completely stage-managed and fake – yet as a culture we come to expect it, so it will hang around for a long time yet. I feel a little saddened by this, but I must accept that English people will not develop the stony expressions of Russians – we’re too British for that. I know also how much it takes for a Russian to adopt the fake smiles of the West, as I discussed with the Russian aunt of my half-Russian flatmate a few months ago.

It also occurs to me that English people are much more easily offended than Russians. I think that a lot of the time, we look for things to get offended about. This is especially the case about things that don’t affect us directly. Furthermore, we have a national fear of offending people, based on this outlook. For example, on the flight returning to St Petersburg, a lady had placed her cabin bag about six inches away from her in the aisle. A fellow Russian woman stepped between the lady and her bag – and neither of them blinked an eyelid, and each carried on with their own business. English people would have found this incredibly rude. Let’s now replay that scenario - but with English people. Had they been English, the lady would still have placed her bag there – but the other woman would not have stepped in the tiny 6 inch gap. The British woman would instead have stood there, passive-aggressively huffing and puffing, attempting to send telepathic messages to the owner of the bag and eyeballing her to ask her (without actually asking her) to move it out of the way. Let us also consider the fact that this would probably have worked – we are very attuned as a culture to other people’s passive-aggressive hints, given that we do them so much ourselves. This can also be interpreted as the fact that Russian people cannot take a passive-aggressive hint – it is just not something they do as a culture.

English people hate making requests or being assertive, as English people see this as very rude and most un-British. A second example: At the baggage carousel at St Petersburg airport. I have already identified my suitcase coming down the carousel, but a man gets there first and tries to get hold of it, thinking it’s his. I pipe up: “Izvinitye, pazhalusta, eta moy chimadan!” (Sorry, please, that is my suitcase). He replies: “Oy – pahozhye” (oh, mine’s the same). If that was England, it would have played out differently. The man grabs the wrong suitcase, the woman sees and either a) eyeballs him and says nothing, hoping he’ll feel her hate vibes and return the suitcase to the carousel, or b) pipes up with “Excuse me sir, I think that’s MY suitcase” and everyone else thinks “What a rude woman, making a fuss like that, I’d better steer clear”. There is the third alternative of course, of no one thinking anything, but is decidedly more awkward, as it will be said with an undeniable element of embarrassment. We must also acknowledge the internal soul-searching of the British woman when deciding whether or not to say anything. She will have considered all of these factors and weighed them all up. It takes a lot for (the majority) of British people to make a fuss about anything. We just don’t do it.

I would like to reiterate my previous point about that fact that Russian women know how to get things done. I present you the example of the woman who was adamant she was going to buy duty free whiskey, whether the plane was coming into land at that very second or not. We were starting the descent, the captain had switched on the seatbelt signs – yet the woman asked the cabin crew staff no fewer than five times to make her transaction – which they only consented to on the fifth occasion, presumably just so she’d stop nagging.

To sum up - you never really appreciate nipping down to Tesco’s until you haven’t been able to for 3 months.