Differences between

Italy and the UK

ITALY VS U.K.

We left London to Torquay on the 5th of April. We arrived there at night and there were already some host families waiting for us. Everyone was looking out the coach windows trying to guess which his /her family was. Everybody was joking about the host families who were waiting for us at the bus station; we laughed, and thought about how their attitude toward us would be like. One by one, everyone was called by our teacher while we were shouting and thinking of the nice and funny meeting. At the beginning we were a bit nervous and excited, but when we saw and met them our fears luckily went away. Now, everyone is happy with his/her host family and we hope to make them a good impression and to enjoy ourselves, as well. We all took the luggage and were picked up by our host families by car. We all live in terraced houses. Host families are very kind, nice and friendly and let us do whatever we want and the majority of them has given us their front-door keys. They cook quite well and are ready to help us with the washing.

The structure of our families is completely different from ours: they are mostly made up of singles or two friends or of only-parent with children and sometimes pets. The houses are quite big and clean and some of the rooms are wide and comfortable, but some are a bit small. English houses are completely different from ours in several things: e. g. they have got a carpet on the floor but no tiles; in the bathroom they haven’t got a bidet but only a bath with a shower, a toilet and a wash basin, which has got two taps instead of one, like ours; in the kitchen they have got a washing and a drying machine to wash and dry clothes.

Other differences are: the time zone goes one hour earlier than in Italy; the food is totally different because of a major content of calories, more fats than in Italy; everyone makes a large use of margarine, butter and fried food. There are many differences in life style as well: English people wake up earlier and have a very rich breakfast made up of cereals, toasts with jam and margarine, bacon and eggs, milk, tea and coffee. Then they go to work and they have a short lunch-break, so they don’t come back home but only eat a sandwich. After that they resume working till 5:00 o’clock p.m. . They come back home to have dinner much earlier than in Italy. They eat a lot for dinner but they just have a main course with a dessert. Once shops close, there’s no one in the street and if people go out after dinner they go to pubs to drink.

In Italy, instead, we usually take a coffee or we don’t eat anything; we have a big lunch with several courses at home. We start working again at about 4 o’clock till 8.30 p. m. when shops close. Our dinner is made up of a single main course and after if you want to go around you’ll certainly find lots of people.

The last difference we have noticed is about the means of transport. When you want to get on the bus in UK you have to queue up and pay, entering it, to the driver. If you see your bus passing and you aren’t standing at the bus stop, if you try to take it, it doesn’t stop. If you want to walk on a pavement in a group, you have to stay two by two on one side to let other people walk, as well. You have to behave in the same way if you are on an escalator.