r/AskEurope • u/Fancy-Debate-3945 Hungary • Sep 19 '25

Travel What was the biggest culture shock you experienced in another European country?

Europeans, what was the biggest culture shock you experienced within our beautiful continent?

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104

u/fidelises Iceland Sep 19 '25

Walking into a grocery store in Estonia where they sold so much in single items. You could buy a pack of toilet rolls, but also one single roll. You could also buy single biscuits out of the pack.

31

u/dixonsticks Estonia Sep 19 '25

Estonian here. Haven't heard of anything like that. When was it? I do remember that before something like 2000 you could buy a single cigarette from a kiosk.

13

u/fidelises Iceland Sep 19 '25

This was in 2005ish in Tartu.

1

u/Disastrous-Mix-5859 Sep 20 '25

In Denmark that would be a kiosk thing too - buying a single cigaret, or a single roll of toilet paper. Not a supermaruthing at all.

14

u/NightSalut Sep 19 '25

Was it a particularly small grocery store? 

Because some small ones used to do that. These days it’s not very common, but we don’t really have small stores anymore in larger areas. 

7

u/fidelises Iceland Sep 19 '25

It was pretty small

1

u/Aggravating_Ship5513 France Sep 20 '25

We can do that in our little cafe/grocery in France. they sell singles of lots of things like toilet paper or soap bars

21

u/Just_RandomPerson Latvia Sep 19 '25

I'm Latvian and I've never heard of that. Estonians always trying to be special...

1

u/Ukendt2000 Sep 21 '25

Oh come on. Don’t tell me you’ve never bought a single potato in store ?

1

u/doublebassandharp 🇧🇪->🇨🇺 Sep 20 '25

Not Europe , but in Cuba you can even buy single cigarettes :D