What things do people from Australia miss most when they go abroad?

I lived in Orange County, CA, 1999–2002. Tell you what I missed. Yes, this will overlap with Vadim Berman.  

  • Food. Vadim begged not to get started, I will. Yes, it’s my fault for not cooking; I did myself permanent damage through three years of  US takeout. In particular:
    • Lamb
    • Subtle pasta sauces
    • Human-sized portions
    • Coke that tastes like acid instead of cough syrup
    • Obscure food
    • Tim Tams
      • To counter these: Australian ice cream was crap 15 years ago, and you can’t get decent Mexican in Australia. Taco Bill’s does not count.
      • Come to think of it, getting  decent Mexican was too much of a challenge in Orange County too.
  • Rudeness. Yes, people in Australia are relatively relaxed and carefree. They are also far more British than they realise, reserved, and do not talk to randoms. (Foreigners coming here diagnose this as cliqueishness.) So no, we do not like it when people assume we do.
    • I was heartily sick of being told “Hey How Ya Doin'” by randoms any time I ventured out the door. I dreaded going into the SuperShuttle and being chatted to by Americans. Do I know you? No? Then leave me alone already.
    • Which is why, two years in, visiting New York was an epiphany. Finally, a place where I can be shoved by passers-by in the street!
  • Absence of religion in the public sphere.
  • Absence of flags in the public sphere. (Tony Abbott was in my future at that point.)
  • Non-toxic politics and unnoticeable culture wars. (Tony Abbott was in my future at that point.)
  • Having Australian accents  on the TV not sound weird.
  • Seeing people walk around to go to places.
  • Human sized shopping malls.
  • Weather. At all. (I was in SoCal.)
  • Public transport. At all.   (I was in SoCal. SoCal buses do not count.)
  • Australian humour.

Since we say Slovenia, Serbia, and Croatia, then why do we say Czech Republic instead of Czechia?

I am going to regret wading into this.

I am quite OK to say Czechia; then again, I have been exposed to languages that are quite OK to say Czechia (Tschechei, Tchéquie, Τσεχία, Ĉeĥio). So why the anomaly in English?

It could be an endogenous reason—because Czechia doesn’t work for English speakers; or it could be an exogenous reason—because someone told English speakers to use Czech Republic instead.

Is there something awkward in English about Czechia? Can’t be that the root is monosyllabic: we’re fine with Serbia and Bosnia and India. Can’t be the final -/k/ before –ia: Slovakia is OK.

Is it that Czech and Czech-oslovakia is familiar, and Czechia is unfamiliar? A minor factor, possibly, but I find it hard to believe that it was decisive. We didn’t freak out with Abkhaz ~ Abkhazia, after  all.

So I’ll assume it was exogenous reasons. Someone, at the critical time of the Velvet Divorce, told English speakers that they should use Czech Republic; and Czechia wasn’t put forward as an alternative. Without exposure to the alternative Czechia, people went with Czech Republic.

Actually, no they didn’t, because that’s a damn fool thing to call a country. Noone says they went on holidays to the Commonwealth of Australia, or that they like listening to Republic of Korea-Pop. Without being given the option of Czechia, they started calling the country Czech.

Now, why were English-speakers not given the option?  Presumably because some shmuck started getting all hot under the collar about how Čechy is not Česko, and we can’t have the world language conflating Čechy with Česko, and Moravo-Silesians are people too.

That hypothesis leads to the following questions:

1. Why did only English get subjected to that kind of edict?

2. Why did anyone in Czechia  assume that anyone outside Czechia cares about the difference between  Čechy and Česko?

3. Why did anyone in Czechia not realise that the small number of people who are both native speakers of English and care about the difference between Čechy and Česko, already have a word for Čechy—Bohemian.

4. Why did anyone in Czechia think they could get non-Czechs to understand that Czechia only refers to Bohemia, but Czech refers to Bohemia + Moravia + Silesia?

English does not have a committee running it, as Zeibura S. Kathau says in his answer. It does however have linguistic conventions and regularities. By making people say Czech Republic, the aforementioned shmuck was flouting the   linguistic conventions and regularities of English. For that, they deserve to been bastinado’d.

Except that Fate has held an even better vengeance for that shmuck—and as collateral damage, all of said shmuck’s compatriots.

Fate has rewarded said shmuck with a generation of English speakers, saying that they went on holidays to Czech.