Off With Their Shoes!!

There are a few cultural differences that become glaringly obvious when you move to a new country.  For me, one of of them has been the issue of taking off shoes when you enter someone’s home.  I would make a sweeping statement about how in Canada everyone takes off their shoes when they enter the house, but after the bagged milk thing, I realize not everything is as widely Canadian as I thought.  So I will say, where I come from in Canada, the first thing you do when you walk through the door, is take off your shoes. 

I was recently reminded of this after seeing a discussion about it on Gawker, where the author was outraged that people had a party and asked their guests to remove their shoes at the door.  Even though they gave prior notice on the invitation and even had little slippers for people to wear.  Seriously, what more do people want?

Growing up I was taught to never wear my shoes in someone’s house.  It’s considered to be VERY rude.  If I ran in the house after playing and forgot to take my shoes off, my mother would be on me like white on rice… and even though my father seemed to forget quite frequently, for the 21 years I lived with them she never failed to remind him to get his ass into the porch and take off his shoes.  I think she would have had a cardiac arrest right on the spot if I ever tried to pull that at someone else’s house, because it would mean she had given birth to a little barbarian with no manners to speak of. 

It is still so deep within me that, to this day, I am absolutely incapable of entering someone else’s house without taking my shoes off.  When we go to friends they often look at me weird and tell me I don’t have to take them off, but I’m like… oh yes, I do… I so do.

I pondered that maybe we started this because of the nasty weather we get in Canada.  That people don’t want us tromping through their houses with dirt and snow all over our boots, but I don’t think that’s it.   Here in the Netherlands it is not the norm to remove your shoes, even though this country is quite often wet and dirty.  That’s not even mentioning the ridiculous amount of dog shit on the foot paths here.  So if it were something that came to be because of dirty shoes, I think that definitely would have happened here as well.

I have been living in the Netherlands for 10 years now and my brain still never fails to crack and twitch every time someone enters my home without removing their shoes.  I watch them come in with their dirty, wet shoes and walk up the hall, into my living room and onto my sofa.  I once even saw a friend put their feet up on my new footstool (with their shoes on)… which almost gave me a stroke.  Year after year, visitor after visitor, I’ve bitten my tongue and tried to adapt.  That’s just how people do things here and I have never wanted to be the weirdo who asks people to take off their shoes.  

Until recently…

I eventually just said the hell with it and when having a gathering this winter I asked people to take them off.  We had children here and with tile floors and wet weather things could get slippery pretty quick.  Nobody seemed to mind, or at least they didn’t say anything to my face.

It can be such a fine balance at times when you try to accept new cultures, especially when it’s so blatantly going against your own.  When you are brought up to behave in a certain way and believe certain things, even with something as simple as removing your shoes, it’s very difficult to change just because of a change in location.  It can be confusing at times to decide when it’s good to hold on to your own cultures without appearing to be stubborn or refusing to adapt.

I’ve thought a lot about this issue after seeing some other Canadian friends of mine complaining about people here barging into their house with their shoes on.  Then again after reading the article on Gawker and realizing it’s not just an issue of being an expat but also differing opinions among people in their own countries.  Most of the people commenting on the article were in America and their opinions varied quite widely.  Although I did notice that the comments reflected that Canada and Japan appear to feel more strongly about not wearing shoes in the house.

I spent a lot of time not integrating here, and it’s still a work in progress.  I do believe that when I am out among the Dutch I should try harder to speak their language, I should start riding my bike and get out and experience things the Dutch way.  Even though I am not quite there yet, I do think that this is the way I should be living my life.  I live in the Netherlands, it’s up to me to adapt to their way of life in regards to the language and life here in general.

Should that extend to my own home though?  Where is the line?  Should the culture of the country I live in take over in every aspect of my life or is it ok to, at least in part, view my house as a sort of sanctuary.  A bit of Canadian soil in the Netherlands, so to speak… where I can live comfortably by my own beliefs and cultures.

I’m really curious about this, because the bigger part of me wants to say “Oh HELL TO THE NO!  This is MAH house and if you don’t like it you can getthefuckout!!” but then there’s the other side of me who doesn’t want to create an issue, recognizes that it’s really not such a big deal and thinks, just shut up and mop up after them when they leave.

What do you think? 

Where are you from?  Do you take your shoes off when you enter someone else’s house?  Do you think it’s rude not to, or that it’s rude of them to ask you to?

Are you an Expat in NL who has come across this issue?  An expat in another country who experienced this?

This inquiring mind wants to know!