Eleven foreign customs Australians will never understand

I love a good "cheers" to begin a session of drinking. Eye contact is a must. Clink your glasses, acknowledge your friends, and then get into it. In Russia, however, you have to provide a toast before every single drink, dedications that become progressively more slurred and exotic as the night wears on. It's kind of cool – but still, I don't really understand it.

Complete disregard for road rules

You can tell a lot about a country, I think, by the experience of walking across a pedestrian crossing. In some countries cars will scream to a halt if you even look like crossing the road. In other places they'll actively try to run you down. India, to me, falls into the latter category, a country where it's more road "suggestions" than road rules, where chaos reigns supreme, and it's every man, woman, child and cow for themselves. I prefer the order of Australia.

Eating late (really, really late)

I like the southern European custom of eating late. I'm more than happy to have dinner at 9pm, and even 10pm would be fine. The Argentineans, however, take this to the point of ridiculousness, often sitting down to dinner, on a standard weeknight, at 11pm, or even midnight. They then go to bed late, get up early to go to work, return home for a mid-afternoon sleep, go back to work till late, and then the whole cycle restarts. To me, it's bizarre.

See also: Six of the best Argentine gourmet experiences

Applauding when the plane lands

This isn't a custom you can attribute to one particular country – according to various people in happens in Poland, in Greece, in Russia, and even sometimes in the USA. Still, regardless of who is at fault here, I've never really understood the custom of clapping when the plane lands. Who are you applauding? The pilots can't hear you. And the plane is just a machine.

See also: Dress well for an upgrade? 10 myths about air travel, busted

Child beauty pageants

I love the USA, I really do, but in amongst all the good stuff, Americans have plenty of cultural quirks that are absolute head-scratchers to me. One of those is the popularity of child beauty pageants, of parents dressing up their children, often from the very beginning of their lives, in glamour costumes and parading them in front of people to be judged. It seems to me like the worst thing you could do to a kid.

Tipping

This is another American custom that I just can't get behind. I understand that it might improve the standard of service, but all of those unwritten rules and hidden costs seem crazy to me. Just include the service charge in the cost of the food, and pay your staff a decent wage. Come to think of it, it would also be extremely handy if they included the tax in the advertised price as well. That's another rude shock for unwary customers.

See also: Think tipping in the US is complicated? It just got worse

South American-style winery tours

Going on a winery tour in Australia generally has one purpose: to drink wine. As much of it as possible. Very few people actually care about the intricacies of the wine-making process, which is why most wineries won't even bother walking you through the basics. This is wine – drink it. In South America, however, in Argentina and Chile, a winery tour includes an exhaustive, step-by-step explanation of wine-making from every single establishment you visit, before having a few quick sips of the product and leaving. Weird.

See also: 13 lessons Australia needs to learn from the Japanese

Gun culture

Of all America's baffling cultural quirks, surely the nation's slavish devotion to guns is the most bizarre. You can't talk sense to most Americans about guns. It's a constitutional right, it's a vital form of self-defence, it's a way of ensuring they can fight against a tyrannical government. Of course what it really is, is a killer of tens of thousands of people annually. And yet nothing will ever be done.

Shops closed on Sundays

There's something quaintly old school about going out on a Sunday in parts of Germany, and Austria, and Switzerland, and discovering that all of the shops are closed. It stops being quaintly old school, however, and starts becoming incredibly annoying, when you realise that they're not just opening late today – they're not opening at all. And they won't open next Sunday either. In the 21st century, this is an odd quirk.

Siesta

I love the idea of siestas. However, the reality of it seems kind of frustrating. For starters, in countries such as Spain, Italy and Argentina, you're committing yourself to not two, but four rush hours every day: getting to work, getting home for siesta, getting back to work, and getting home from work at the end of the day. That's a lot of wasted time. Plus there's the inconvenience of having all the shops closed for three or four hours every afternoon. It's a little baffling to me.

What are the foreign customs you'll never understand? Are there any you would like to introduce in Australia?

Email: b.groundwater@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Instagram: instagram.com/bengroundwater

See also: How not to be a bad tipper in the US

See also: Tipping guide for Australians going overseas