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by stevekemp 2914 days 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.)

3 comments

It’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.

It'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.
What 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.
To 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.
Which 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-appro...

The UK seems to expect people to panic less in case of a fire, I suppose.
Did they measure the effect of the regulation?
Also 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)

I 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.
I'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

Many Americans have washing machine in the kitchen, especially in older and smaller apartments.