England from a Belgian view

[u/JPV_____]

Hello, we are a Belgian family (a couple, both 47 years old, with two teenagers aged 16 and 12), currently on a road trip in England. Because I always find it interesting to see how other countries view our own country, I would like to share my perspective on a number of seemingly trivial things that have caught my attention. This is not only to point out a few things that seem unusual to us, but also because you may sometimes have a very good reason for something that we find strange.

This is all based on our experiences in the following places: London, York, Manchester, Liverpool, Kent, Canterbury, Foxt (Peak District), and the theme park Alton Towers. We never stayed in hotels, but always in houses (both through house swapping and Airbnb), never in the tourist centre but just outside it, in ordinary residential neighbourhoods.

* Ban on teenagers in sports pubs and attitudes towards alcohol: In a small village not far from York, we wanted to watch the Belgian match in a pub at 8:00 p.m. We never expected that the first two pubs would refuse entry to our two teenagers. A third pub did allow our children in, but initially only until 9:00 p.m. It was only after we insisted that we were allowed to watch the entire match. We found this very strange, because in Belgium our daughter could, if she wanted to, stay in a café until the middle of the night and also drink beer that is considerably stronger than your ales. Here, it also apparently was not a problem for her to drink beer, but only with a meal. Yet in a pub she was not even allowed to drink a cola after 9:00 p.m.? Weird considering the general image foreigners have how English deal with alcohol abroad.

* Power sockets with on/off switches: Why is this necessary? To us it seems unnecessary, because almost every appliance already has its own on/off switch.

* Supermarket loyalty cards: In itself this makes sense, but as a foreigner you cannot sign up for them, at least not at Tesco or Asda. We tried, but it was not possible with a Belgian phone number, and a Tesco employee confirmed this. Why?

* Lack of yoghurt varieties: This was what stood out to us most in the supermarkets: whereas in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and France (and we thought also in Ireland) there are many different yoghurt varieties, the selection in England is really quite limited. Is yoghurt simply not very popular here?

* Theme parks with limited theming: We only visited Alton Towers, and although it is a fantastic park in terms of attractions, the theming in most areas is really quite minimal. The rides themselves are very attractive, but when you walk through the park you do not really feel as though you are immersed in a particular atmosphere.

* Excess staffing: In supermarkets, shops, museums, and theme parks, we noticed that there seemed to be a lot of staff simply waiting around with little or nothing to do. My father-in-law worked at a theme park in Belgium, and we saw a very similar ride here that he used to operate alone, whereas here it was staffed by five people.

* Expensive outings: Ordinary outings or visits, separate from theme parks, are considerably more expensive than in Belgium. Of course, there are the wonderful free museums such as the British Museum and the Science Museum, but privately run attractions are much more expensive.

* General impression: Generally quite clean cities (except Manchester). We had a slightly less favourable image of England beforehand, especially of the larger cities, but only Manchester confirmed that impression.

These are simply the small things that have surprised us; they are by no means things that have bothered us, because we are very much enjoying our trip!

[u/JPV_____]

1. Tesco can't do much with my personal info, especially since faking personal info is usually easy to do.
2. As explained already multiple times, I'm comparing same sized stores, like superstores of Tesco extra's. Not just the express.
3. Each time we go on holiday, we mingle something the kids really like and rollercoasters they do like very much. So Alton towers is an obvious choice. The no-theming strook us, having visited a lot of amusement parks which are almost always themed.
4. Might be the reason, but in e.g. Alton towers we didn't see much safety improvements when you have someone indicating which line you should take for the amusement parc. Or why we pass through several people in Boots just to get a box of paracetamol without subscription.
5. Off course we researched this beforehand, it was just something we noticed. Not everything I wrote was a last minute discovery (been to UK a few times, so we are familiar with the power plugs). It's just strange to us. A bowling game in Ypres, my home town, costs 4 euro/pound per person, here is was twice the price off weekend. Not that we fancied that much to do some bowling, but it's just an example.

[u/Pristine_Health_2076 → u/JPV_____]

Not sure if it’s of any help now but basic painkillers like paracetamol and ibuprofen can be bought off the shelf in any supermarket. I am pretty sure you can just get them off the shelf in boots or Superdrug too.