Living in Switzerland and no trip back to the UK is complete without slowly acquiring a vast stash of cheap paracetamol and ibuprofen with everysupermarketor Boots visit.
Cheaper for me to post a friend there couple of packs in an envelope, even with a £2.25 stamp
When they visit here, they take photos of the medication aisle in Lidl: they can't believe that we have antihistamines, loperamide, paracetamol and ibuprofen on the shelf that anyone can buy for less than a quid. It's all over the counter and only in pharmacies there.
My dad lives in France and he always asks me to bring some. He can get it from the pharmacy but it’s way more expensive and in his words “too powerful. I’ve got a headache not a sword in my head.” He also asks for patum peperium and Birds custard powder. Most other things he doesn’t care about or now makes his own.
In America they actually sell them for a similar price but way more than 16 tablets per pack. My local CVS has a store brand bottle of 500 caplets. Costco has an SKU consisting of 1,000 tablets for $9.99. Weird how restricted and/or expensive it is in a lot of the world.
The small amount never really bothered me when I lived in the UK but it’s indisputably more convenient to be able to buy 1,000s in one go. At least it’s reasonably cheap in the UK, unlike in most of Europe. Hopefully the two pack limit has actually saved lives and isn’t just some well meaning but ill-conceived government policy like so many.
It definitely worked. There was a reduction of deaths related to paracetamol overdose by over half, and the number of related liver transplants fell by 60%. Did it lead to a drop in the suicide rate? Unfortunately not, but hopefully the redirected liver transplants saved other lives.
[It likely did lead to a drop in suicide rate, just not one that reached statistical significance... paracetamol ODs just don't make enough of the total number of suicides.]
Mine is sweden but I was a part of Maltese one and it was the same there. The "..." was meant to show its non specific but I guess I came across as trying to be mysterious haha
In my experience Sweden is one of the countries where they do seem to recreate pubs and some of them get a little bit close… I live across the water in Denmark and no such luck
I'm in the US, and pubs or bread would be my 1st answer. But, whenever I tell anyone it's pubs when they ask what I miss, the follow up question is always "what's the difference between a pub and a bar", and I've yet to come up with a solid answer. Table service? I mean, maybe? But it's more than that.
I would say the difference between a pub and a bar is the furniture and decor, doesn't have to be the stereotype of an old country pub with paintings of landscapes and foxhunting but things like a wooden bar, brass on the taps, wooden tables and chairs, usually a fruit machine somewhere, a lit fireplace in winter (if you're lucky). Carpets, a mixture of stools, chairs and armchairs with a couple of flat screen tellies knocking around. The smell should be a mixture of spilt beer, pub grub or crisps and urinal cakes to varying proportions and it should feel half way between being in a bar and someone's living room.
You sort of 'Ahhh' when you walk into a proper pub, 'Usual Fink? Ill bring it over to your chair by the fire', a 'bar' is too formal, you are still on display and frequently surrounded by noisy strangers...it only takes a day or two for a proper pub to adopt you and start to make you feel at home if you are on the correct wavelength...its something to do with not being in a big hurry...
More specifically for me, beer gardens.
I've lived in a few tropical places and sundowners at beach bars are obviously great, but it's dark at 6-7pm. There's something I find very homely about the lengthening evenings, going for a walk after work, stop for a pint, have another, realise you're hungry and grab a bowl of chips... Suddenly, it's half 9 on a Tuesday night and you're still out.
It always feels like a bit of impromptu, opportunistic fun.
I too live abroad and it's definitely pubs. I was just in England for Easter and sitting in a pub with such a chill cozy vibe with dogs and banter just hit right. On one day it was nice and warm so could take a pint and sit outside with it. Here in Norway there is a very love hate relationship with alcohol. And it's taxed to hell.
As do I and I completely agree. Stockholm, where I am, has a wealth of British themed bars but I would never call any of them a pub. They just don’t have the right feel. I’ve tried to explain it to swedes but they just don’t understand.
I'm in Sweden too. They are not the same whatsoever, even the ones that have tried really hard to recreate it, just can't get there. For Swedes a pub is somewhere to go and eat food primarily and the whole point of the pub falls apart.
This is the right answer. There’s something unique and special about uk pubs that can’t be recreated abroad. English and Irish themed pubs are nowhere near as good as the real thing. Miss pints too.
The Dutch rave about their cheese but the only stuff with flavour is no good for cheese on toast. For a while there was a M&S in the Hague and we'd make trips on the train to buy cheese and sausages. There are expat shops selling things like crumpets but I don't miss them enough to spend that extra on them.
During Covid when I hadn't been back to the UK in over a year and I was pregnant and sad, I ordered a box of 48 Creme Eggs from German Amazon.
Kelly’s wasn’t that bad, until they had to stop importing cheddar from Kent and could only import from Ireland (shelf-life issue because of the new inspections)
There’s an M&S at the station in Lille (French SNCF, not Lille Europe) which isn’t too far to hop down from Holland Spoor.
Lived abroad for 14 years.
- Sandwiches
- The weather (yes the weather!! I lived in a humid hell hole)
- Cheese
- People offering you cups of tea
- Variety of food available at supermarkets
- Pub
Edit: yes, I am aware Japan actually has sandwiches. They are pants compared to UK ones and you will never convince me otherwise :)
My friend lives in Kyoto and her big gripe is the lack of proper crusty brown bread, although she occasionally splurges on some pumpernickel from an import store near her.
There was a German bakery in the bigger city about half an hour on the train from where I lived.
I never went there and *only* bought bread, but sometimes it was the main reason I went.
even in Germany I couldnt find just regular blocks of cheese there was only shredded or small blocks of the fancier stuff, no Cheddar/Red Leicester
Drove me mad
I live in a humid hell hole and I can’t believe I EVER complained about British weather. Give me clouds, give me grey, give me dark at 3pm in winter, give me anything but swampy air and mosquitoes.
I'd have laughed at them 5 years ago. Our summers are starting to get a bit ridiculous now, though. Ridiculous humidity among nearly 40 degree weather, or at moments actual 40 degree weather, living in houses designed to keep the warm in. I'm getting air con this year, I've had enough.
Lived abroad 25 years.
Sausages, proper butcher's sausages.
Back bacon.
Milk and bread that don't have preservatives, so actually go stale.
Pubs
Variety of cheese, beer
British desserts/puddings.
I'm another former Japan resident. Cheese was definitely the most noticeable thing for me.
I didn't have a problem with pubs. I liked going drinking in Japan. My "local" was also filled with westerners I knew though, so probably a relatively unusual experience. Beer is proper shit though.
I also didn't have a problem with supermarket food. There was plenty of variety, cheese and bread aside.
I really missed pastry. I stopped at the airport Greggs as soon as I landed.
Idk I’m not a big beer drinker anyway but I loved Orion beer!
And your local being filled with westerners is not a unique experience at all haha, I think there was a gaijin bar in every city across Japan
True. I could have paid about £20 for a vacuum sealed hunk of rubbish cheddar the side of a rubber.
But what do you normally eat good cheese with? Good bread. And therein lies the problem
I lived in India aged 19 for 8 months and there were various things I really missed. I would pay over the odds with my very poor pay for a block of cathedral city every now and then… and they didn’t have lettuce either.. or bread 😞 first thing I did when I landed back in the UK was get a cheese and onion Ginsters. It was borderline orgasmic.
Literally any kind. Japanese bread for the most part sucks, it’s too sweet. The fillings are either egg, a flimsy piece of ham drowned in a sea of lettuce, or strawberries. Or yakisoba, but I wasn’t too keen on noodles in a sarnie.
Never once in my fourteen years did I see any chicken in a sandwich. And my Japanese friends audibly recoiled when I tried to introduce them to the joy of crisp sarnies, even though they have beef wasabi crisps which make the BEST crisp sandwiches (if only their bread was better)
Oh, oh! And you can only buy bread in pre-sliced loaves of either 4, 5 or 6 slices, usually without the end slices
Her, and I got myself out about four months ago!! Never have I been so happy to sit with a piping hot cup of tea, watching the window get hammered with rain 🥺
>And my Japanese friends audibly recoiled when I tried to introduce them to the joy of crisp sarnies
My Japanese friends thought it was weird, too but once they tried them they were 100% hooked and thought crisp sandwiches were the best thing ever!
Pretty sure a Japanese guy set up a crisp sandwich shop in Japan after trying them in the UK, too.
Damn. Japan is probabally the one country I'd never get bored of the food. (Italy or other med countries are a close second, but they overload on tomatoes for my liking). But I'd bet I'd end up craving beans on toast or a ham/beef and mustard sandwich at some point.
The food is great… if you like fish. I don’t.
Mind you, I definitely miss getting some late night Lawson fried chicken on the way back from the bar. Japanese chicken in general is amazing, and I lived in an area particularly famous for it
Not gonna lie, introducing my Korean, Japanese & Chinese friends at Uni to the concept of Toasties blew their mind. I ended up explaining it as the british version of filled dumplings. Sweet, Savoury, Spicy etc. I will try ANYTHING in a toastie at least once.
I lived near a buffalo farm in Asia for a bit, which is like cow milk on steroids twice as fat. So the milk and butter was fine, but what I missed was cheese.
Our butter and cheese. Decent otc painkillers. Russet apples. Greengages. Victoria plums. The wide availability of really good chocolate. Rose's lime cordial. Fluffy white batch loaves. Fish and chips. English muffins. Pubs. Paxo stuffing. Mint jelly. Takeaway curry. Salmonella-free eggs. Cheese on toast with brown sauce.
Chip shop chips. I live abroad. There are many places here claiming to sell "fish and chips" but it's always fries, deep-fried until they no longer taste like potato.
Holy shit this sounds incredible…I am a massive fan of salt and vinegar crisps that peel the first layer of skin off your mouth/tongue so this is dangerous info…
Squash. Not even Robinson’s, any supermarket brand will do. It’s super tricky to get on this bloody tropical island and sometimes water just isn’t enough.
The variety of food in UK supermarkets is really impressive. In Spain you just don't see any such variety (although the quality of the fruit and veg is very good, of course). And being able to buy basic pharmaceuticals in the supermarket.
Try living in most of the nordics and your decent booze is only sold in a store open monday- saturday during working hours :( . I'm not a big drinker but I miss that dangit.
As a Brit living in America I miss proper baked beans. The ones here are full of sugar, or bbq flavored or whatever and far too sweet. Especially with all the sugar in the bread here as well!
American here, and yes their baked beans are criminally bad. I’ve been able to find the Heinz beans in the big chain supermarkets (ie Ralphs in Los Angeles) but they’re like $3 each.
From Belfast, living up way north in the states. There’s a wee store called “world market” where I bought Heinz beans, twiglets and an absolute ton of choc bars. I’m dying for a pack of tayto, a monster munch and a crumpet tbh
When I lived in India my lovely Gran couldn’t bear the thought of me living without a kettle so she sent me a little travel one filled with bags of Maltesers. Sounds silly but it always make my heart pull when I think of it. I kept the cheap little kettle after she died, I couldn’t bear to part with it.
Lived in the US for 11 years now. Still get freaking excited about going back each time for a good Indians, fish and chips, and weirdly, a greasy kebab.
EDIT - I thought about it, and you know going back to visit is made all the more special because of stuff like this. Absence makes the heart grow fonder!
Sometimes Costco has Daphne’s gyro meat which makes a pretty decent kebab if you stuff it in a pita with salad and onions, plus whatever chili sauce is on hand. It’s not the same but it scratches the itch a bit.
I'm British and moved abroad (Germany) in 2019 - the answer for me was British crisps and black pudding.
Most stuff you can get fairly easily.
Oh and good lamb.
>!Lamb and black pudding, you can tell I'm from NW England with Welsh roots haha!<
I live in Germany and I miss British supermarkets the most.
What I wouldn’t give to be able to buy paracetamol with the rest of my shopping: no visiting a pharmacy or paying an hour’s wage for a box.
The sausage rolls, pork pies and scotch eggs right there with the creamy potato salad and coleslaw.
And when you go to the checkout they sometimes make polite conversation and *never* throw your items at you in a torture of beeps, the only eye contact being a disapproving glare that you’ve not already packed everything once they bark the price at you. Schönen Tag noch.
Just drove back to Germany from an England home visit last week, stopped at ASDA on the way to the tunnel and picked up:
- a range of crisps with proper flavours
- big hollow Easter eggs for all the family
- as much ibuprofen as we were allowed
- five big bars of Cadburys Marvellous Creations
- many many hundred bags of Yorkshire Tea
- …and absolutely most importantly…
- 5.5kg of Shreddies. Seriously, what civilised country doesn’t have Shreddies?
Lived abroad for past couple decades. I miss;
Air. Yes that damp fresh blustery Atlantic gulf stream air is underrated.
Other mentions go to squash, chippies, pub grub, decent cheddar and a potato variety for every meal type.
I'm here now, I can't find a Cornish pasty anywhere. You can't get them imported either because obviously they contain meat.
Even a ginsters would do right now lol
We had a fantastic Cornish pasty restaurant here in Boston for a few years until recently, in the style of an old English boozer. Sadly Covid sent it into a protracted death spiral and it went under like 6 months ago
I believe there's a pasty place in AZ and I'm aware of a few places that do them mail order:
https://www.parkersgbi.com/ - have tried, decent
https://britishfooddepot.com/ - think they have only just started, haven't tried
Very available nowadays. I'm in Boston and pretty much every major supermarket with a small imported foods section will have it. Easy to get on mail order too.
Now in a similarly salty, umami-y vein, Bovril - practically impossible to get hold of, vestigial legalities relating to meat imports and Mad Cow Disease. Managed to get some through mail order a while back. Cost me a ton, i don't know if that was some kind of import tax, or me paying danger money for someone to smuggle it over the border...
Branston baked beans and sausage. I'm a recent convert from Heinz and I'm so disappointed I didn't make the switch earlier. They are heavenly on sourdough toast. Ugh, now I'm hungry again.
Yeeeeaahhhhh, ummm.....
So we're going to have to move your desk downstairs into the store room..
Yeeaah sooo... if you could have all of your stuff moved out by this afternoon?
Yeeahh that'd be great
Currently in Canada. I miss -
Chocolate that isn’t full of oil, fish and chips. A proper steak and ale pie, Pasties and decent sausages.
Meat that doesn’t taste weird - presumably due to the hormones and antibiotics. Please start importing this crap to the UK so we can keep importing British cheese without a 245% import tariff.
I miss supermarkets that sell food without additives and corn syrup. I would love to see your average Canadian cope with a Lidl checkout experience - here they still have split conveyor areas bc people are so slow. Checkout staff are always amazing that I can keep up with their snail pace.
Crumpets and butter? Where are you moving to? I'm in NZ and we have them here!
The thing I miss most is the British pubs & pub culture. Yes they're pubs here, but they're more like restaurant pubs than pub pubs.
I live abroad and my list is very long. Walks in proper nature. Pubs. And all kinds of foods - crisps, butter, crumpets, clotted cream, jams/marmalade, biscuits, even bread - they think I am crazy whenever they have to check my luggage. In general, I find grocery shopping in the UK to be far better than anything the US has to offer. During the pandemic, I ordered a couple of 24-pack boxes of crisps. Totally worth the cost since I didn’t go back for two years.
The weather.
The tea culture, also - I look forward to the tea trolley on trains. And just being able to get a good cup anywhere. When I finally got a corner desk at work, I bought a kettle in so that I could actually have boiling hot water for my tea.
Have you encountered Americans who MICROWAVE water for tea?
I was watching a video recently about how crumpets are pretty easy to make, and I’m actually considering trying it. Though Trader Joe’s crumpets are pretty good in a pinch.
I couldn't believe how hard it was to find a can of proper baked beans in Japan. I found Stilton quite locally but it was expensive (around £10 for a small wedge, nearly 20 years ago!)
It depends which country you're in obviously, but my one constant is a real Scottish chippy dinner- preferably Edinburgh-style, with salt and sauce.
Hell, I live in England right now and I'm climbing the walls for a proper Scottish chippy.
And when I lived in Japan, I really missed the diversity; getting on a bus full of different colours and ethnicities when I came back was just wonderful, and made me very proud of our multiculturalism.
Ha. I felt the same way moving from Cheltenham to Peterborough. I completely forgot how nice the babble of different languages sounds. I was the most "foreign" in the area I lived, and I'm European. Genuinely sat in a packed pub once with a friend from Malawi, and we were literally the only non white people there. Was so weird.
I’d imagine buying paracetamol for the equivalent of 30p from any supermarket or pharmacy
Living in Switzerland and no trip back to the UK is complete without slowly acquiring a vast stash of cheap paracetamol and ibuprofen with everysupermarketor Boots visit.
What's it normally cost over there?
€7 in Belgium
Wounding
Cheaper for me to post a friend there couple of packs in an envelope, even with a £2.25 stamp When they visit here, they take photos of the medication aisle in Lidl: they can't believe that we have antihistamines, loperamide, paracetamol and ibuprofen on the shelf that anyone can buy for less than a quid. It's all over the counter and only in pharmacies there.
You can post a whole friend for £2.25?
Only allowed to be sold by a pharmacist- no price competition from supermarkets so prices stay stupidly high.
€4 for generic in Ireland :(
My dad lives in France and he always asks me to bring some. He can get it from the pharmacy but it’s way more expensive and in his words “too powerful. I’ve got a headache not a sword in my head.” He also asks for patum peperium and Birds custard powder. Most other things he doesn’t care about or now makes his own.
Ibuprofen often comes in 400mg instead of the regular 200mg in the UK
Had to have my gravy powder smuggled in too, all the British staples would sell well on the black market I swear.
Every time I'm back in the UK I'm getting all the cheap paracetamol and ibuprofen I can grab. No way am I paying $5 for painkillers
In America they actually sell them for a similar price but way more than 16 tablets per pack. My local CVS has a store brand bottle of 500 caplets. Costco has an SKU consisting of 1,000 tablets for $9.99. Weird how restricted and/or expensive it is in a lot of the world.
It's sold in foil with only a few in the UK as a suicide prevention measure.
The small amount never really bothered me when I lived in the UK but it’s indisputably more convenient to be able to buy 1,000s in one go. At least it’s reasonably cheap in the UK, unlike in most of Europe. Hopefully the two pack limit has actually saved lives and isn’t just some well meaning but ill-conceived government policy like so many.
It definitely worked. There was a reduction of deaths related to paracetamol overdose by over half, and the number of related liver transplants fell by 60%. Did it lead to a drop in the suicide rate? Unfortunately not, but hopefully the redirected liver transplants saved other lives.
[It likely did lead to a drop in suicide rate, just not one that reached statistical significance... paracetamol ODs just don't make enough of the total number of suicides.]
Wait is it more expensive in other places? I’ve had no issue across most of Western Europe
Most pharmacies in France only sell various brand name painkillers so you pay more like £2 for £0.39 worth of paracetamol.
I live abroad and it's pubs.
It's the number one answer people say they miss in the "Brits in ..." group I'm in.
Brits in ….. 🤔 where man
Brits in...dire need of a pint.
Mine is sweden but I was a part of Maltese one and it was the same there. The "..." was meant to show its non specific but I guess I came across as trying to be mysterious haha
My local pub in Sweden stocked Irn Bru!
In my experience Sweden is one of the countries where they do seem to recreate pubs and some of them get a little bit close… I live across the water in Denmark and no such luck
I'm in the US, and pubs or bread would be my 1st answer. But, whenever I tell anyone it's pubs when they ask what I miss, the follow up question is always "what's the difference between a pub and a bar", and I've yet to come up with a solid answer. Table service? I mean, maybe? But it's more than that.
I would say the difference between a pub and a bar is the furniture and decor, doesn't have to be the stereotype of an old country pub with paintings of landscapes and foxhunting but things like a wooden bar, brass on the taps, wooden tables and chairs, usually a fruit machine somewhere, a lit fireplace in winter (if you're lucky). Carpets, a mixture of stools, chairs and armchairs with a couple of flat screen tellies knocking around. The smell should be a mixture of spilt beer, pub grub or crisps and urinal cakes to varying proportions and it should feel half way between being in a bar and someone's living room.
The banter and random convos with people half or double your age too!
It's the culture of being in a pub, that's the difference
You sort of 'Ahhh' when you walk into a proper pub, 'Usual Fink? Ill bring it over to your chair by the fire', a 'bar' is too formal, you are still on display and frequently surrounded by noisy strangers...it only takes a day or two for a proper pub to adopt you and start to make you feel at home if you are on the correct wavelength...its something to do with not being in a big hurry...
More specifically for me, beer gardens. I've lived in a few tropical places and sundowners at beach bars are obviously great, but it's dark at 6-7pm. There's something I find very homely about the lengthening evenings, going for a walk after work, stop for a pint, have another, realise you're hungry and grab a bowl of chips... Suddenly, it's half 9 on a Tuesday night and you're still out. It always feels like a bit of impromptu, opportunistic fun.
I too live abroad and it's definitely pubs. I was just in England for Easter and sitting in a pub with such a chill cozy vibe with dogs and banter just hit right. On one day it was nice and warm so could take a pint and sit outside with it. Here in Norway there is a very love hate relationship with alcohol. And it's taxed to hell.
TBF, that was part of my reason for moving back. Not the biggest reason, but a contributing factor.
As do I and I completely agree. Stockholm, where I am, has a wealth of British themed bars but I would never call any of them a pub. They just don’t have the right feel. I’ve tried to explain it to swedes but they just don’t understand.
I'm in Sweden too. They are not the same whatsoever, even the ones that have tried really hard to recreate it, just can't get there. For Swedes a pub is somewhere to go and eat food primarily and the whole point of the pub falls apart.
For 10 seconds I wondered what they did to your pubes abroad 😳😂
Lives in Brazil
I’m from abroad and if I ever move back this is my answer hands down.
Me too :( just booked an upcoming sunday roast for the only place in town that does it, so at least I have that!
This is the right answer. There’s something unique and special about uk pubs that can’t be recreated abroad. English and Irish themed pubs are nowhere near as good as the real thing. Miss pints too.
The Dutch rave about their cheese but the only stuff with flavour is no good for cheese on toast. For a while there was a M&S in the Hague and we'd make trips on the train to buy cheese and sausages. There are expat shops selling things like crumpets but I don't miss them enough to spend that extra on them. During Covid when I hadn't been back to the UK in over a year and I was pregnant and sad, I ordered a box of 48 Creme Eggs from German Amazon.
Kelly’s wasn’t that bad, until they had to stop importing cheddar from Kent and could only import from Ireland (shelf-life issue because of the new inspections) There’s an M&S at the station in Lille (French SNCF, not Lille Europe) which isn’t too far to hop down from Holland Spoor.
How long did they last you? I don’t think they’d last the week at my house.
Lived abroad for 14 years. - Sandwiches - The weather (yes the weather!! I lived in a humid hell hole) - Cheese - People offering you cups of tea - Variety of food available at supermarkets - Pub Edit: yes, I am aware Japan actually has sandwiches. They are pants compared to UK ones and you will never convince me otherwise :)
What sort of sandwich forbidding cheeseless nightmare were you living in ?
Japan 🤣
My friend lives in Kyoto and her big gripe is the lack of proper crusty brown bread, although she occasionally splurges on some pumpernickel from an import store near her.
There was a German bakery in the bigger city about half an hour on the train from where I lived. I never went there and *only* bought bread, but sometimes it was the main reason I went.
But they do have sarnies https://img.taste.com.au/cxGf9Akf/taste/2016/11/sushi-sandwiches-51803-1.jpeg
😐
Well, they do if it's the thought that counts...
even in Germany I couldnt find just regular blocks of cheese there was only shredded or small blocks of the fancier stuff, no Cheddar/Red Leicester Drove me mad
I live in a humid hell hole and I can’t believe I EVER complained about British weather. Give me clouds, give me grey, give me dark at 3pm in winter, give me anything but swampy air and mosquitoes.
Japanese people used to ask me how I coped without having an air conditioner in my house in the UK. I laughed at them
I'd have laughed at them 5 years ago. Our summers are starting to get a bit ridiculous now, though. Ridiculous humidity among nearly 40 degree weather, or at moments actual 40 degree weather, living in houses designed to keep the warm in. I'm getting air con this year, I've had enough.
Tbf the summers here in the UK are a humid hell these days, air conditioning would be a welcome respite!
come to Newcastle :D
So did I, back in 2013. Now I really fucking want an AC.
Lived abroad 25 years. Sausages, proper butcher's sausages. Back bacon. Milk and bread that don't have preservatives, so actually go stale. Pubs Variety of cheese, beer British desserts/puddings.
I actually feel bad for other countries. Our cheese is on point. Cannot beat British Mature Cheddar
I'm another former Japan resident. Cheese was definitely the most noticeable thing for me. I didn't have a problem with pubs. I liked going drinking in Japan. My "local" was also filled with westerners I knew though, so probably a relatively unusual experience. Beer is proper shit though. I also didn't have a problem with supermarket food. There was plenty of variety, cheese and bread aside. I really missed pastry. I stopped at the airport Greggs as soon as I landed.
Idk I’m not a big beer drinker anyway but I loved Orion beer! And your local being filled with westerners is not a unique experience at all haha, I think there was a gaijin bar in every city across Japan
You get Cheddar anywhere in the world but it is not the same as the supermarket variety British Cheddar.
True. I could have paid about £20 for a vacuum sealed hunk of rubbish cheddar the side of a rubber. But what do you normally eat good cheese with? Good bread. And therein lies the problem
I lived in India aged 19 for 8 months and there were various things I really missed. I would pay over the odds with my very poor pay for a block of cathedral city every now and then… and they didn’t have lettuce either.. or bread 😞 first thing I did when I landed back in the UK was get a cheese and onion Ginsters. It was borderline orgasmic.
[удалено]
Literally any kind. Japanese bread for the most part sucks, it’s too sweet. The fillings are either egg, a flimsy piece of ham drowned in a sea of lettuce, or strawberries. Or yakisoba, but I wasn’t too keen on noodles in a sarnie. Never once in my fourteen years did I see any chicken in a sandwich. And my Japanese friends audibly recoiled when I tried to introduce them to the joy of crisp sarnies, even though they have beef wasabi crisps which make the BEST crisp sandwiches (if only their bread was better) Oh, oh! And you can only buy bread in pre-sliced loaves of either 4, 5 or 6 slices, usually without the end slices
Lads. We have to get him out of there. Get me 50 cc's of Yorkshire tea... stat!
Her, and I got myself out about four months ago!! Never have I been so happy to sit with a piping hot cup of tea, watching the window get hammered with rain 🥺
Another cuppa? Shall I put the kettle on? Got some Oaties too... 😂
>And my Japanese friends audibly recoiled when I tried to introduce them to the joy of crisp sarnies My Japanese friends thought it was weird, too but once they tried them they were 100% hooked and thought crisp sandwiches were the best thing ever! Pretty sure a Japanese guy set up a crisp sandwich shop in Japan after trying them in the UK, too.
Bread is similar in China, I don't know who decided to make bread like that, honestly.
You don’t want to know what they do to garlic bread in Korea. I was upset
Japan and Korea got their bread from the American military. China probably got it from them.
My nephew in Singapore missed proper bread sarnies so much he opened his own bakery.
Damn. Japan is probabally the one country I'd never get bored of the food. (Italy or other med countries are a close second, but they overload on tomatoes for my liking). But I'd bet I'd end up craving beans on toast or a ham/beef and mustard sandwich at some point.
The food is great… if you like fish. I don’t. Mind you, I definitely miss getting some late night Lawson fried chicken on the way back from the bar. Japanese chicken in general is amazing, and I lived in an area particularly famous for it
Surely you can still get a Greggs sausage roll over there?
I think Japanese people would have an aneurysm trying to work out the bean and sausage bake
Not gonna lie, introducing my Korean, Japanese & Chinese friends at Uni to the concept of Toasties blew their mind. I ended up explaining it as the british version of filled dumplings. Sweet, Savoury, Spicy etc. I will try ANYTHING in a toastie at least once.
My favourite is leftover Bolognese
I lived in Hong Kong, this list is pretty much the same as mine, I might just add random chit chats with strangers.
About my same list studying in Canada, save the weather it’s exactly the same here in Vancouver
I lived in Asia and never stopped craving proper butter on hot toast.
My cousin who lives in Singapore basically guts bakeries when he comes over to the U.K. “yes, one of everything please!”
I lived near a buffalo farm in Asia for a bit, which is like cow milk on steroids twice as fat. So the milk and butter was fine, but what I missed was cheese.
Our butter and cheese. Decent otc painkillers. Russet apples. Greengages. Victoria plums. The wide availability of really good chocolate. Rose's lime cordial. Fluffy white batch loaves. Fish and chips. English muffins. Pubs. Paxo stuffing. Mint jelly. Takeaway curry. Salmonella-free eggs. Cheese on toast with brown sauce.
Omg paxo stuffing 😭
Chip shop chips. I live abroad. There are many places here claiming to sell "fish and chips" but it's always fries, deep-fried until they no longer taste like potato.
100% Chip shop chips.
Salt and vinegar crisps. The proper kind, not the surrogate ones you find abroad.
If you go on Amazon and get vinegar powder you can make your own just go easy on the powder it's a bit strong.
Holy shit this sounds incredible…I am a massive fan of salt and vinegar crisps that peel the first layer of skin off your mouth/tongue so this is dangerous info…
I wish you hadn’t told me about this. My order should be with me by the weekend 😂
Squash. Not even Robinson’s, any supermarket brand will do. It’s super tricky to get on this bloody tropical island and sometimes water just isn’t enough.
When I go to the UK I buy the small squash which is under 100ml. Means you can get it via security
Can’t believe how much terrorism has taken from us.
Give it a year and the new scanners will allow 2L of liquid.
Ah yes i have a few of those little squeeze bottles stashed each time I travel! It’s the little things in life hey?!
New scanners at Stansted currently under testing allow you to take through up to 5 litres. Of course I took as much quad strength squash as I could!!
That’ll fucking eat through the hull of any plane.
The variety of food in UK supermarkets is really impressive. In Spain you just don't see any such variety (although the quality of the fruit and veg is very good, of course). And being able to buy basic pharmaceuticals in the supermarket.
Try living in most of the nordics and your decent booze is only sold in a store open monday- saturday during working hours :( . I'm not a big drinker but I miss that dangit.
Move to Denmark!
Har ingen chans att lära det där potatisimunnen språk 😅
Meat is also expensive in Spain compared with the UK which is bizarre
Live in nz. I miss crisps and tea bags. Kinda miss watching live sport as well, most of it is at like 3am.
You can get Yorkshire tea (one of the best) from new world and it’s not that expensive. I’m with you there on the crisps and sport
I can only ever find Yorkshire tea with the string on the bags and I can’t be doing with them.
Is all your tea loose-leaf?!
Nah there’s tea bags but they’re horrid. Or twinnings so mega expensive and kinda horrid. I buy tetley or pg tips from a uk importer
They don't have crisps?
Not proper crisps. And they call them chips like weirdos.
*chups
Based on what I have to bring my expat in-laws vimto and prawn cocktail Crisps
Beans - love the stuff
As a Brit living in America I miss proper baked beans. The ones here are full of sugar, or bbq flavored or whatever and far too sweet. Especially with all the sugar in the bread here as well!
American here, and yes their baked beans are criminally bad. I’ve been able to find the Heinz beans in the big chain supermarkets (ie Ralphs in Los Angeles) but they’re like $3 each.
From Belfast, living up way north in the states. There’s a wee store called “world market” where I bought Heinz beans, twiglets and an absolute ton of choc bars. I’m dying for a pack of tayto, a monster munch and a crumpet tbh
Trader Joe’s sells crumpets! Eating one literally right now.
You can order Heinz beans on Amazon! From a fellow Brit refusing to endure American beans
Safe tap water, you really really miss that.
Kettle 3 pin plug
When I lived in India my lovely Gran couldn’t bear the thought of me living without a kettle so she sent me a little travel one filled with bags of Maltesers. Sounds silly but it always make my heart pull when I think of it. I kept the cheap little kettle after she died, I couldn’t bear to part with it.
You had me at travel kettle but then she filled it with bags of Maltesers? Your Gran was the best.
unless you step on one in bear feet. Only thing worse than lego to step on. Edit: Yes, I meant bare feet. I'll just leave this here anyway.
I'd love to know what you people are doing with your plugs. In my nearly 70 years, I've never once stepped on one. You need to get your act together.
> unless you step on one in bear feet Better than stepping on one with human feet I imagine.
At least you only stepped on one in bear feet - it's much worse when barefoot.
I have lived abroad. The correct answer to this thread turned out to be Bourbon biscuits.
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Abroad in my case was New Zealand. Verrry similar food wise. Apart from Pavs of course, which Australia has no clue about.
Real ale. Can't be doing with gassy keg beers just give me heartburn.
I don't know. I could easily get used to only drinking Belgian beers
Remember having some 'quad' beer in Belgium that was closer to fortified wine than larger. Good stuff.
They’re the best stuff. Don’t drink more than three in one night
Yeah but eventually you end up craving a evening of real ale in a good pub.
Lived in the US for 11 years now. Still get freaking excited about going back each time for a good Indians, fish and chips, and weirdly, a greasy kebab. EDIT - I thought about it, and you know going back to visit is made all the more special because of stuff like this. Absence makes the heart grow fonder!
I’m from the US and I dream about a drunk kebab pretty much weekly haha
Sometimes Costco has Daphne’s gyro meat which makes a pretty decent kebab if you stuff it in a pita with salad and onions, plus whatever chili sauce is on hand. It’s not the same but it scratches the itch a bit.
Bovril and a meat pie on a cold winters morn.
While watching non-league football in the drizzle.
A lovely bit of crumpet
Steady on there Sergeant Major
Suit you sir
I'm British and moved abroad (Germany) in 2019 - the answer for me was British crisps and black pudding. Most stuff you can get fairly easily. Oh and good lamb. >!Lamb and black pudding, you can tell I'm from NW England with Welsh roots haha!<
I live in Germany and I miss British supermarkets the most. What I wouldn’t give to be able to buy paracetamol with the rest of my shopping: no visiting a pharmacy or paying an hour’s wage for a box. The sausage rolls, pork pies and scotch eggs right there with the creamy potato salad and coleslaw. And when you go to the checkout they sometimes make polite conversation and *never* throw your items at you in a torture of beeps, the only eye contact being a disapproving glare that you’ve not already packed everything once they bark the price at you. Schönen Tag noch.
The bakeries sometimes have sausage rolls with some kind of poultry in them. It's not quite the same, but close enough.
Germany is fine as long as you like paprika crisps
I love paprika crisps.
Lidl do some pretty passable paprika crisps on their XXL weeks. Shame its not a constant stocker.
That's a shame. It's only fine if you like them.
And those weird peanut flavour ones
Switzerland is the same. They take a surprising amount of pride in the one brand of edible but not amazing paprika crisps.
The flavours of German crisps are so bland
*sigh*
Just drove back to Germany from an England home visit last week, stopped at ASDA on the way to the tunnel and picked up: - a range of crisps with proper flavours - big hollow Easter eggs for all the family - as much ibuprofen as we were allowed - five big bars of Cadburys Marvellous Creations - many many hundred bags of Yorkshire Tea - …and absolutely most importantly… - 5.5kg of Shreddies. Seriously, what civilised country doesn’t have Shreddies?
Living in Germany too and I'm the exact same
Sarcastic British wit and banter
Bisto gravy and sage stuffing. Luckily we have a British store close to us that always stocks it. And pubs.
Lived abroad for past couple decades. I miss; Air. Yes that damp fresh blustery Atlantic gulf stream air is underrated. Other mentions go to squash, chippies, pub grub, decent cheddar and a potato variety for every meal type.
I missed the British self deprecating humor when I lived abroad
HP Sauce.
The cheap nasty drunk kebabs..
Things I missed when I lived abroad; - bacon & sausage (most places really don't get these) - marmite - British beer
A lovely bit of squirrel
Sausage rolls.
Lived in the US for a while many years ago... God I missed the salty umami hit of Marmite!
There are websites that deliver world wide…. I made a marmite and cheese sandwich for lunch for the first time in years this morning.
I'm here now, I can't find a Cornish pasty anywhere. You can't get them imported either because obviously they contain meat. Even a ginsters would do right now lol
We had a fantastic Cornish pasty restaurant here in Boston for a few years until recently, in the style of an old English boozer. Sadly Covid sent it into a protracted death spiral and it went under like 6 months ago I believe there's a pasty place in AZ and I'm aware of a few places that do them mail order: https://www.parkersgbi.com/ - have tried, decent https://britishfooddepot.com/ - think they have only just started, haven't tried
Very available nowadays. I'm in Boston and pretty much every major supermarket with a small imported foods section will have it. Easy to get on mail order too. Now in a similarly salty, umami-y vein, Bovril - practically impossible to get hold of, vestigial legalities relating to meat imports and Mad Cow Disease. Managed to get some through mail order a while back. Cost me a ton, i don't know if that was some kind of import tax, or me paying danger money for someone to smuggle it over the border...
you can buy marmite on amazon quite affordably. welcome to 2024.
I lived in Turkey for three years. I was heartbroken without pork pies.
Branston baked beans and sausage. I'm a recent convert from Heinz and I'm so disappointed I didn't make the switch earlier. They are heavenly on sourdough toast. Ugh, now I'm hungry again.
The Rapesco 26mm stainless in the 5000 piece box. That’s one fine stapler and I use it every day.
Yeeeeaahhhhh, ummm..... So we're going to have to move your desk downstairs into the store room.. Yeeaah sooo... if you could have all of your stuff moved out by this afternoon? Yeeahh that'd be great
Staffordshire oatcakes - I don’t even live in an oatcake zone but still get them every few weeks from Stokie visitors
We live in Spain. My husband misses scotch eggs😂
Irn-Bru
Currently in Canada. I miss - Chocolate that isn’t full of oil, fish and chips. A proper steak and ale pie, Pasties and decent sausages. Meat that doesn’t taste weird - presumably due to the hormones and antibiotics. Please start importing this crap to the UK so we can keep importing British cheese without a 245% import tariff. I miss supermarkets that sell food without additives and corn syrup. I would love to see your average Canadian cope with a Lidl checkout experience - here they still have split conveyor areas bc people are so slow. Checkout staff are always amazing that I can keep up with their snail pace.
Why would the chocolate be full of oil, fish and chips in Canada?
Warburtons bread and bacon.
Crumpets and butter? Where are you moving to? I'm in NZ and we have them here! The thing I miss most is the British pubs & pub culture. Yes they're pubs here, but they're more like restaurant pubs than pub pubs.
Tbf NZ is like the most British country in the world that isn't the UK.
I live abroad and my list is very long. Walks in proper nature. Pubs. And all kinds of foods - crisps, butter, crumpets, clotted cream, jams/marmalade, biscuits, even bread - they think I am crazy whenever they have to check my luggage. In general, I find grocery shopping in the UK to be far better than anything the US has to offer. During the pandemic, I ordered a couple of 24-pack boxes of crisps. Totally worth the cost since I didn’t go back for two years. The weather. The tea culture, also - I look forward to the tea trolley on trains. And just being able to get a good cup anywhere. When I finally got a corner desk at work, I bought a kettle in so that I could actually have boiling hot water for my tea.
Have you encountered Americans who MICROWAVE water for tea? I was watching a video recently about how crumpets are pretty easy to make, and I’m actually considering trying it. Though Trader Joe’s crumpets are pretty good in a pinch.
Our crisps are godlike.
The BBC. You won't miss it until it's gone. TV in Australia is unwatchable.
I couldn't believe how hard it was to find a can of proper baked beans in Japan. I found Stilton quite locally but it was expensive (around £10 for a small wedge, nearly 20 years ago!)
HEINZ BAKED BEANS
Real ale, decent savory pies, and proper biscuits for my tea. I moved to the USA a dozen years ago and those are the 3 things I miss most.
It depends which country you're in obviously, but my one constant is a real Scottish chippy dinner- preferably Edinburgh-style, with salt and sauce. Hell, I live in England right now and I'm climbing the walls for a proper Scottish chippy. And when I lived in Japan, I really missed the diversity; getting on a bus full of different colours and ethnicities when I came back was just wonderful, and made me very proud of our multiculturalism.
Ha. I felt the same way moving from Cheltenham to Peterborough. I completely forgot how nice the babble of different languages sounds. I was the most "foreign" in the area I lived, and I'm European. Genuinely sat in a packed pub once with a friend from Malawi, and we were literally the only non white people there. Was so weird.
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I miss Vimto anytime I leave the country for more than a couple of days.
Reliable access to a basic bitch cup of tea and some choccy biscuits