Books that gave you weird ideas / expectation about foreign countries?

It's totally true. I am an American who grew up on Noel Streatfeild, Frances Hodgsen Burnett, E. Nesbitt, Diana Wynne Jones, and all the rest. I went to London for a semester and was genuinely disappointed that they'd moved to the decimal system after I'd finally worked out how many shillings to a pound and pence to a shilling.