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>What are some examples of things you thought were "normal" until you moved elsewhere? Where I come from, the UK, all the entrances to your house, your flat, a
by stevekemp 8y ago
>What are some examples of things you thought were "normal" until you moved elsewhere?
Where I come from, the UK, all the entrances to your house, your flat, and shops that don't have automatic/sliding doors would open _inwards_. You'd push a door to enter. Now I live in Finland an doors open outwards.
There are a ton of tiny differences I've noticed since moving from the UK to Finland, another example would be that light-switches turn on/off in the opposite direction to that I'd expect.
That said though I've started taking a lot of these things for granted now, so it is actually quite hard to think of more examples!
One thing I'll never take for granted is that the majority of flats here in Helsinki have their laundry-machines in the bathroom. In the UK the washing-machine would ALWAYS be in the kitchen, or in a dedicated laundry area if the house was large/modern enough.
(Also the UK would have all rooms of a house be carpetted, barring a reasonably modern trend of solid-wooden floors. In Finland houses are universally carpet-free, although people frequently use rugs.)
- kekeblom 8y agoIt’s actually fire safety code in Finland that doors have to open outwards. It should be easier to evacuate the building in case of a panic. You might still find old buildings where this is not true and they probably just predate the regulation.
- amelius 8y agoDid they measure the effect of the regulation?
- bodas 8y agoIt's also for fire safety reasons that doors open inwards in the UK. It means that the door can't be blocked from the outside.
- wyattpeak 8y agoWhat an interesting contrast. I wonder if there's some regional difference in behaviour, or if it's just a case of mandating something which seems superficially beneficial.
- bodas 8y agoTo be clear, if it's an emergency door in a large building where a crush could occur, it will open outwards. But most residential buildings aren't big enough to require that, except for large tower blocks.
- Zenst 8y agoWhich makes sense, until you get to fire-exit doors in the UK, which all open outwards in work buildings, which they have to by law if the building contains a certain number of people. Hence many small shops/offices will have exceptions. But a whole myriad of rules: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-approved-document-b https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fire-safety-appro...
- popman 8y agoThe UK seems to expect people to panic less in case of a fire, I suppose.
- bencoder 8y agoAlso from the UK, and lived in Finland for a year. This surprised me massively when I moved considering the possibility of the door being blocked by snow on the outside. You also get the great drying cupboards above sinks (and correspondingly, kitchen sinks without a window directly above them)
- justsomedude43 8y agoI believe having a washing machine in the kitchen is a British thing. I've never ever seen anyone do that and I've been to quite a few EU countries.
- astura 8y agoMany Americans have washing machine in the kitchen, especially in older and smaller apartments.
- dagw 8y agoI've lived in a couple of flats in Sweden that did it that way, mainly because the bathrooms are so small there is no space there for a washing machine. Although by far the most common solution is to have no washing machine in the flat and a shared washing machine in the basement