Some strange facts about the English

1)

You know the type of fast food joints that are seemingly alike and interchangeable all over the world. Here in the UK you’ve got those as well of course but besides those there are also some local chains, like ‘Subways’ for example.

So one evening after a long day of classes, I thought I’d do something what I don’t do so quickly, I went for some easy, cheap, fast food. And if I’m at it, I might as well do it properly and order the whole package deal, you know, hot sandwich, chips and a huge drink with loads of ice cubes.
The kind of deals you get EVERYWHERE, so you think you know what you’d get. Well, not here in England!

The sandwich was prepared before my eyes, fresh veggies etc. -so far so good-, the drinks I was supposed to get myself –great! I could take as much coke as I like without the watery cubes-, and then I was patiently waiting for them to come up with my damping hot, freshly baked, crusty potato chips… but I should have gotten suspicious earlier already because there was no ‘friture’ in eyesight.

So I asked for my ‘chips’, the man looked behind me and pointed at the stacked boxes with packages of ‘Lays’ chips besides the entrance. What the fuck!!! Okay, those things are also called ‘chips’, but I consider them as a kind of candy that happens to fill you up a bit as well, but not as chips as in ‘fish and chips’. ‘Des frites’, ‘French fries’, ‘frieten’ weet je wel! The kind we Belgians consider as our national pride and we so proudly claim to prepare in the best manner in the world. Nope, not the English, they weren’t that famous for their ‘cuisine’ and eating habbits anyway, and this surely doesn’t help either.

But I must be honest and give‘em some credit as well, London is a fantastic place if you like good food and a diverse palate of choices from all over the world. From Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese to Korean cuisine, prepared in the most authentic ways. Italian, French, Spanish, Scandinavian and even several quite good Belgian restaurants can be found in this city. Really, you can’t imagine it and you can find it here… At least, if you have the money for it, I only now it from my guide ;)

2)

Another one about food. At the LSE campus there’s this student restaurant (a kind of Alma for those who studied in Leuven), handy in between courses and the food is decent.

But… here they don’t serve food as one dish or meal for a certain price. Nope those English like to complicate things and make their menu and policy so ambiguous that you only find out the price at the cashier with all your food already on your plate.

So last week I took the “fish dish” that was on the menu for £ 3.50, that makes +/- € 5,25. Enough for a very decent meal at the “Alma” I taught.
Well no, for that I only got a piece of fish on my pathetic empty plate.
But then I moved on to discover that 2 meters further in the buffet they had a ‘great deal’: I could choose two extra items from the buffet for only £ 4.55 in total and thus upgrade my meal with potatoes and vegetables. Well, I had no other choice, did I ?

With a damping full plate I proudly and hungry went for the cashier. The woman looked at my plate as if she was putting an estimated value on it, and that seemed indeed to be what she was doing.
“£ 5.05” she said,
“Excuse me?”, was my surprised answer, “I taught it said £ 4.55 on the menu”.
“Yes it does”, she replied me, “but you took more than one scoop” (een schep in schoon Vlaams).
I beg your pardon!!!
I still tried: “I saw that price on the menu, how could I know”,
but she rebutted me with “You can go and see, it’s written underneath. And it’s only 50p.”, she added, trying to ridicule me.
I murmured something like, “Yeah, it’s only 50p. for everything here in London!”, but paid without further protest.

Lesson for the next time: also read the small print in restaurants (back home only banks and telephone companies try to rip you off through their small prints, you know).
My € 7,50 “Alma” meal filled me up alright but without any enjoyment. Paying per scoop, have you ever!
Next time I’ll insist them to count my peas, measure my steak and weigh my coke!

3)

One more to get it over with. It’s about English sinks and water taps, you know the things in kitchens and bathrooms to wash up in. You would think those things are the same all over the world.
Yeah, they are, except for the English of course. Just like driving on the left side and sticking with the pound, they’re one stubborn people those Brits.

A lot of international students are surprised by the taps on the sinks here in England. Whereas in most developed countries most houses now have those taps where you can mix cold and warm with 2 knobs on the side of one tap -so you can have the ideal temperature-, the English have two separate taps on their sinks.
Okay, you can find those also in other countries, and you can also find those mixing taps here, but it is striking that the majority of the taps are of the non-mixing type.
So that means one steaming hot tap (it’s really hotter than in most Belgian households) and one freezing cold.

You might think what a trivial, stupid fact but a lot of foreign students here have noticed this and they ask themselves how the English wash e.g. their face. You can’t mix the temperature! So or you burn yourself or you get a headache from the cold water, or you have to mix it in the sink all the time. Really not that handy!