20+ People Who Moved From a Major City to a Small Town Are Opening Up About What Gave Them Culture Shock

When you live in a small town, you’re bound to run into the same people all over town. So, you get the chance to get to know everyone in town.

Of course, this also means that everyone will come to know you in no time at all. As this person says, how that plays out for you is all about how you treat people and how you present your personality. Both bad and good news will travel fast.

Given the limited demographics that the last person mentioned being in a lot of small towns in the United States, that lack of diversity starts to show in some places.

This person noticed that the people they met in the small town had a much harder time understanding accents. They noticed that the difficulty was genuine too, not just an offensive obtuseness. It just happened from not really hearing many accents beyond their own, especially for those who have never lived outside their small town.

When you live in a big city, you get used to a lot of noise in the background. For instance, the sounds of traffic, chatter from the apartment hallway, or even sounds from businesses nearby.

The same isn’t true once you move to a small, rural town. Here, you won’t hear much at night save maybe the distant sound of a neighbor’s dog or even just crickets. If you’re not used to it, it can even feel a little unnerving!

You would think moving to a small town would make it easier to meet people. After all, you run into the same people everywhere you go — how could you not make friends?

That’s why this person was a bit surprised at how difficult it was to make friends in their new, small town. After all, you can’t hit the town for a night out and see who you might meet. Yet, after this person found the community they were looking for, it was tighter-knit than they were ever used to seeing.

As far as big cities go, Los Angeles is about as famous as New York City. It’s a sprawling city that’s home to many with plenty of famous landmarks to boot.

Moving from here to a rural midwestern town would prove to have some real culture shock. What shocked this person the most was how great summer is in the Midwest. While it isn’t the case in most small towns, this one happened to be a great one for festivals on top of the fresh produce and great weather.

When you move somewhere new, you might learn that they do things a little differently there. That includes the things people say as well as what they do.

This person was used to being sarcastic when they met people in the east coast city they lived in before. Once they moved to a small town, though, they found that people took their sarcastic approach a bit more seriously.

Moving somewhere else might also introduce you to new food. At the very least, you might see some familiar ingredients used in different ways.

In this case, it was the way that mayonnaise was dished out that left this person with a bit of culture shock. Plus, they found that the condiment came in much larger quantities than they were used to. Who knew mayo was so popular here?

Of course, the use of mayo is only one example of one food that left someone in culture shock. Another came in the form of Jell-O.

This is a more common trend in small midwestern towns than in other parts of the United States. If you weren’t used to it, we can see how this much gelatin might make you wonder if you stepped back into the ’70s. Nope — it’s just a staple here.

At this point, we’ve talked a lot about how the food might be different when you move to a new place. That was this person’s experience, too. What really struck them, though, wasn’t exactly how the food was made.

Instead, they were a bit shocked to see how they cut the pizza to serve it, at least in most cases. As for the “bring your tractor to school day” part, that’s just one of the odd quirks of living in a small, rural town.

If you’ve lived in a major city and bought a house or even looked at buying one, you know that prices can be sky-high.

Odds are, you can find more space for less money if you’re willing to leave the city to go to a small town. This cuts down on some of your amenities like we’ll talk about but this person was shocked to see how affordable housing was. On top of that, they had friendly neighbors to boot!

There are some things we talk about that vary from small town to small town. For example, you might have heard the stereotype that small Southern towns don’t exactly handle snowy weather well.

However, if you live in a small town that’s apt to some sort of weather event, you start to get used to it after living there for a while. The first time you see inclement weather in a new town, it can shock you how calmly the locals handle it.

Different towns have different major businesses or locations that everyone is familiar with, even if it’s just from passing by them every single day.

As for this person, they were used to seeing certain shops and favorite locales like coffee shops around. Once they moved to the Midwest, the scenery changed a bit. With religion a more central part of the community, there were a few churches to choose from, even in a single small town.

When you move somewhere, you’re bound to find things about where you live that you don’t like as well as you like. There are some negatives that are just too much to take, though.

This person found that the lack of diversity in their small town led to some narrow-minded results. While they said the town may have been beautiful, it obviously wasn’t worth all the racist bullying they went through while they were there.

This person found the same general principle true that the last person did. The people in a smaller town might be friendlier at the fact but it stops there.

They also found that beyond this kind of exterior, there were some of the strictest rules for fitting in that they weren’t familiar with. On the other hand, while people in the city maybe weren’t as friendly upfront, they found they were overall more likely to be more accepting.

We’ve talked about how demographics change depending on where you live. One thing that this person noticed was household size and makeup compared to where they used to live.

Namely, they noticed that there were a lot more big families with children. As such, a lot of the events in the town and businesses were a lot more oriented toward families. You probably aren’t going to go clubbing in a small town!

There’s a stereotype that the city is busy and everyone has somewhere to be and no time to get there while smaller towns have a slower, lazier feel to them.

This person started to see where people were coming from when they noticed that no one in their small town seemed to be in the same rush they were to get somewhere. In just about every sense of the word, they were left wondering if anyone else was in a hurry.

We’ve already touched a bit on the drive that can come with getting anywhere in a small town. Even if the traffic isn’t bad, things aren’t as close together as they are in the city.

It wasn’t necessarily that it took longer to get places that stood out to this person. It was the type of vehicle they saw on the road. In the smaller town they moved to, they saw a lot more trucks and SUVs than they were used to.

There are some things that you might not be used to seeing certain reactions to when you move somewhere new. That’s what gave this person some culture shock.

Most of the time, if you see a fire in the city, something has gone horribly wrong. It doesn’t take long after that for city fire systems to kick into gear if it’s major. In more rural areas, seeing smoke is likely a bonfire that your neighbor is celebrating the evening with.

The cost of living in a city can be high. That’s not only apartment prices but even the cost of groceries and the taxes that you pay.

It was their first paycheck that really blew this person away and gave them a bit of culture shock. In fact, they were pretty sure it was a mistake when they first saw it and even called to double-check what was going on. It turned out to be a benefit of living in a small town.

That economic prosperity doesn’t touch every part of living in a small town, though. It turns out the houses are affordable to help entice people.

With a smaller population to work with, when this person was ready to move on, they found it nearly impossible to make a sale on their house. That would definitely make leaving less of a financial relief than arriving. It made things a little complicated.

Anyone will get a little stir-crazy after sitting in their house for a while. So, if you’re bored, you might go out instead.

In the city, you have plenty of options as to where to go. If you want to go shopping, you have a variety of choices and there are even more places to go to pass the time otherwise. In a small town, your choices are much, much more limited.

That’s not the only thing that’s restricted when you live in a small town. You’re a lot farther from everything, so you’ll have to go out of your way for almost anything.

If you want to grab some food, you probably only have a fraction of the choices that you might have had when you were living in the city. That also comes with much fewer options for the type of food you have in town.

As we said, having limited food options doesn’t just limit your options when you want to consider different restaurants of the same type.

On top of that, the variety of food you have access to is much more limited in a smaller town, especially one with a less diverse demographic. So, if you want more options, you’re going to have to travel. This dad was set to solve the problem himself, though.

Okay, we’ve talked a lot about food at this point but there’s one more major culture shock that many people experience when they’re in a small town for the first time.

If you’re hungry and don’t feel like cooking, you might call for food delivery or jump on an app. The problem is that you might not have those options available to you in a small town. If you’re lucky, you might have a pizza delivery chain, though!

There’s a saying that “the city never sleeps.” To an extent, this is true. While the population obviously sleeps, there’s not an hour that something isn’t open.

The same isn’t true when you live in a small town. There simply isn’t the demand for it. That means that you’ll want to check closing times when you’re running errands and make sure you have all the snacks you need before it gets too late!

Of course, you can also think about the city never sleeping and think about how bright it is all the time! Between business lights and street lights, you might need a set of blackout curtains.

So, it might be startling the first time you take the trash out at night or step outside for a second. Without any of these street lights and a lot less light pollution, you’re likely to see the night get a lot darker than you’re used to.

We’ve already covered the fact that if you head to a small town, there are a lot of things that could give you a bit of culture shock.

When you come to a small town for the first time, you might be shocked by how quiet and quaint it is. It would shock you even more if your neighbors thought that the rural town you just moved to was a little too busy and big for them after all.

In this modern day and age, a lot of people rely on an internet connection for just about anything. If you live in a big city, that’s probably not a problem.

While it’s becoming less of a problem in some small towns, there are many small towns that have much more limited options when it comes to staying connected like this. If you do want reliable, unlimited internet — if you can even get it — can cost an arm and a leg.

There are definitely some animals you get used to seeing in big cities. For instance, you see plenty of pigeons and you’ve probably seen a rat or two in your time.

In the country, you get used to seeing a lot bigger wildlife. In a rural town, you might see loose farm animals, foxes, raccoons, deer, snakes, and even cougars. Any one of these might surprise someone who was new to the area.

There are a lot of shared spaces when you live as close as people do in a big city. For example, you might step right out of your apartment door and into a shared hallway.

Yet, when you live in a house in a small town, there’s no shared space between your home and just heading outside. It was this lack of liminal spaces that made this person feel a bit startled from time to time when they first made the move to a small town.

When you head to a major retail outlet in a big city, you might have shorter or even terser interactions with the retail workers there. Can you blame them?

They’re dealing with a high volume of customers and not all of them treat the retail workers they interact with well. Heading to a less busy area, you might be surprised how much more relaxed some retail workers have the chance to be.

Rural small towns are usually home to a lot more farmland and a lot more people make their money off of agriculture directly than in their everyday lives.

That also means that you might run into some problems that are pretty unexpected if you haven’t lived around a lot of farmland before. For instance, sometimes you might just see a police chase including a rather unexpected culprit.

Of course, you might expect cows to a certain extent when you go to a new, rural place. They live there and they’re bound to escape from time to time, right?

There are a few things that you might still not expect to see. A stray cow is one thing but not many people really expect to see a goat making their way down the road or an emu trying their hand at life in the wild.

You have a lot of neighbors when you live in the city. You might even share a building with 100 or more people living in the same space as you. Yet, you might not know many of them too well.

In a small, rural town, you’re going to have fewer neighbors but you might find them more interested in a neighborly relationship than your neighbors in the city. That was this person’s experience, at least.

This person couldn’t help but notice that they met a lot of people with a certain veneer. While they seemed nice on the surface, it wasn’t always the case when the town wasn’t watching.

It was a weird experience when they saw people act so nice to someone in public only to then talk about them behind their backs with some of the worst gossip they’d heard. Gossip exists everywhere but this was particularly brutal.

In small towns, there’s a certain level of trust. Sometimes, you don’t even have to take things inside.

Aside from just not locking things up, this person noticed that people were more apt to leave things in their yards than in the larger area they moved from. Odds are, the items you leave in your yard will still be there in the morning.

Whether you’re living in a small town or a big city, we’re all looking up at the same sky. So, we should all see the same thing, right?

Well, that’s not always the case. Sure, you’re looking up and seeing the same thing but how well you can see it might change. With all the light pollution that often comes as par for the course in big cities, you might be shocked at how many more stars you can see in a smaller town.

We’ve already talked about how if you move to a small town, you have to get used to the businesses there and the probably more limited options than you’re used to.

You might also need to get used to having to make a bit of a drive if you want to visit a popular retail chain. However, you will run into a variety of smaller mom-and-pop shops that you might not know about if you didn’t live there.

We’ve talked quite a bit at this point about how different the scenery is when you move from the city to a rural small town.

This person was shocked not by not having neighbors close or the dark of the night. Rather, they were focused on the fact that their scenery wasn’t a busy street or another apartment building anymore: it was just corn as far as the eye could see.

When you live in the city, there are a few things that you probably try to do as little as possible. Most people don’t want to hit a city sidewalk with their bare feet.

When you have a lawn of grass to walk in that is completely yours, it’s not a big deal to walk around barefoot. As a matter of fact, some people even prefer it. It might not be your first instinct if you aren’t used to it, though.

Directions in a city are usually pretty simple. Something like, “You’ll need to go five blocks down and then take a left and continue for three blocks.”

If you ask for directions in a smaller, more rural town, the directions might be a little different. This person was a little surprised when they first got directions by such specific landmarks while “down the street” probably means more than just a city block away.

Moving from New York City to a small town is a big change. After all, it’s one of the most populous cities in the United States.

One of the things that stood out to this person was the lack of diversity they saw in these small towns compared to New York City. However, the OP was also surprised that agriculture information was just common knowledge to the people around them.

The food blew this person away too, especially the small-town comfort food they tried. The difference in the names of the dishes also surprised them in just moving between cities.

Yet, their review of moving to a small town wasn’t all good. While they saw a lot of community in a suburb, they didn’t really feel like they fit in as a minority. Unfortunately, small towns aren’t always easy for those who don’t fit the mold.

If you don’t have a ride somewhere in the city, it’s not too much of a problem. You can probably flag down a cab, jump on the subway, or take a bus to your destination.

As this person saw the small town they moved to start to rapidly develop, there were some things missing. While it started to have some of the hustle and bustle of a more populous town, amenities like public transport still weren’t common and traffic got horrendous.