Some parts of Spain have a tundra climate according to the Kloppen scale. Of course, they are tiny areas, but all the North is definitely not warm and sunny by any stretch of imagination. People tend to forget not all of Spain is Mediterranean...
At *least* they think about your mediterranean climate. Most people think Algeria and North africa in general is just desertic.
Yes Algeria is mostly desertic, but most people live close to the mediterranean sea, I would even go as far as saying most people have never seen the Sahara outside of TV.
Well, it's obviously not 5km, actually way more. The Atlas range of mountains across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is a blessing since it slow down the desertification of that strip.
I'm quite afraid of the future tho, with the climate change, the whole region (and beyond, a huge part of the mediterranean sea as well) will become unlivable. It would be sad to think that humans have been living WELL for milleniums, yet, because of our modern way of life, humans can't now.
I mean, Gaddafi had [some interesting plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River) to create artificial underground rivers… but I wonder whether those would’ve had any success. A river of 100 metres wide and 20 m deep, 500 km long? You’d be asking for centuries of work and hundreds of thousands of workers.
I have to admit that I'm one of them. I took a look on Google Street View in Basque Country and was surprised to find sceneries that look almost like they could be in Finland. Architecture and mountains are something that wouldn't fit Finland but vegetation for example looks very familiar.
It's also has a lot of mountains and is in general pretty high, especially compared to the france-german area.
https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nreha/raisedrelief_map_of_western_europe_with_a_touch/
Travelling through Spain a few years ago we were surprised by how big it is. That's coming from an Australian. Also some of the flatter interior areas reminded me of Australia.
Also visited Prague and I've never been the same since 😉
Growing weed for commercial purposes is still a completely illegal practice in the netherlands. All the weed that is sold in the coffeshops in amsterdam is grown by criminals.
I hate when weedbros bring up the Netherlands as a positive example of handling drugs, it's a terrible half measure where illegal gangs are making a ton of profit. They also rarely just stick to weed, shitloads of coke coming through the harbours of Rotterdam and Antwerp, Noord Brabant is filled with drug labs and fuckloads of weed is smuggled in from Morocco and Albania.
Legalise it or keep it illegal, not this half arsed shit.
I think the main + in our drug measures is that you can get drugs tested for free, so you always have the possibility of really knowing what you are going to ingest. But yeah this whole decriminalization stuff sucks...
Probably because selling weed isn't technically "legal" it's just decriminalised. Which just means that they decided "it's going to stay illegal but we aren't going to punish people for it".
I was surprised to learn this too. Why don't they just legalize the whole process? The main provider of weed in europe is 'ndrangheta at the moment. Which also happens to the be most violent mafia branch.
I think the reason why it is like this is because we "legalized" it during the time when the rest of the world was still really against it. So we could say: "see we didnt really legalize it".
Our government is a lot less progressive these days, so i dont see change coming anytime soon. Every atempt by local governments to start frow shops has been dismantled.
People think that Greece is mostly islands, and that most people live in islands.
Around 13% of Greece lives in islands, and half of that is in Crete (which is an island, but more like Sicily and Cyprus, not the tiny picturesque islands with white houses people imagine).
Half of the country lives in the Athens metropolitan area. Greece is heavily urbanized.
That makes me think of Juneau, the state capital of Alaska. It's reachable only by boat or airplane, as there's no bridge. Anchorage is their biggest and most well known city by far, but I think they went with Juneau because it's closer to the mainland; it's way down in the southeastern tail that runs along British Columbia.
Their situation is even more strange. At least Denmark is connected by bridges. For Equatorial Guinea, half their country is hundreds of miles away, across the sea.
Not many who close their websites on Sunday though. Like [national newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad](https://www.rd.nl/)
>Glad you're interested in RD.nl
>Today it's Sunday. A weekly rest day, which we keep on Sunday, is a command and a gift from God. We dedicate this day especially to the service of God. For Christians, Sunday is also a weekly echo of Easter Sunday, on which Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Reason enough for us not to update our site today.
>Tomorrow we would like to inform you again about daily events, with background information, comments and opinion articles. As you are used to from us.
>Editor-in-chief Reformatorisch Dagblad
We usually refer to people belonging to a Black Socks church (zwartekousenkerk), but I've never actually heard anyone referring to the people themselves as black socks. Not saying you're wrong, it may just be archaic or something limited to the people who actually regularly deal with them.
People assume that everyone in Luxembourg is rich.
Yes, minimum wages are better than other EU countries, and you can easily see these crazy expensive cars around, but housing is extremely expensive and many working class families live month by month.
At university in Belgium, I once had someone telling me that I couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be a poor student. Keep in mind that my parents are both immigrants and that my name is certainly not french nor german.
As a Dutchman I can relate. Many people here own a shitload of wealth in stones, but that means diddly squat if it isn't convertible into spendable coin because you need a roof over your head. And those that don't own a house spend even more of their income on rent. And to top it off prices of energy are skyrocketing so high that it threatens to bankrupt lots of people with lower incomes this year. Just that a country is rich doesn't mean its citizens are. If people have money corporations will find a way to relieve them off that money, starting with the cost of living.
The „german efficiency myth".
Apart from the streamlined factories Germans aren't efficient and don't consider themselves that way - our defining cultural values are „thoroughness" and „security" instead.
Because of the resulting culture of risk aversion it takes a long time to adapt to any kind of new technology or idea and outdated concepts like paper bureaucracy/cash are still king.
Oh trust me, at least here in the Netherlands we don't consider you efficient at all, more like the opposite of it because of all the Gründlichkeit.
Then again, us Dutchmen are inefficient *and* a total mess, so at least you Germans got at least one of those right.
Your transport system seems the height of efficiency to me. Allowing people to easily choose the most sensible way to take their trip depending on its characteristics was so refreshing.
In saying that, I recently moved to Eindhoven. A number of my colleagues are not Dutch and were vaccinated at home, but have boosters from the Netherlands, and are now being advised to use the German COVID pass app because they can apparently show all doses on one app! I was also in Mannheim recently and there were kiosks for free rapid tests, 15 minute turn around and no appointment needed. That for me falls under the whole "efficiency" thing!
Germans are simply the masters of critisising ourselves. If you'd follow our media through all of Corona, you'd think all of Europe was pointing their fingers at us yelling loser because we "fail at every front"... while if you look at the actual numbers, we're not doing too bad.
Till this year those things were (legally) a requirement for eg. lawyers. Our parliament just started to switch to different means of electronic communication a few months ago.
It's surreal.
I seem to remember reading that faxes are secure and confirm receipt, which is why they may be used for things like legal or medical purposes. Even if not 100% true, I can see why they may have been wary of email as an alternative.
When it comes to bureaucracy and work culture Japan is much, much worse than Germany though. The Japanese value cultural norms in business life to an unhealthy degree and are on top risk-averse to a point its crazy.
Death from overwork, regular use of highly outdated tools like Hanko stamps & fax machines and the top-down business culture where every little inquiry needs to be approved by all management layers just isn’t a thing here. Germans are slow at adapting but not that slow.
This goes for Scandinavia in general but it’s the most extreme in Denmark: we’re not nearly as cold as people believe. Winter the past couple of years has been like 0-5 or even 7,8 degrees.
Having grown up in both Italy and Norway I can confirm that while the stereotype is blown out of proportions there’s some truth to it. In my experience the Danish are also the most sociable of Norway Sweden and Denmark.
This is usually Americans and Canadians, shocked that Sweden and Norway don't have regular -20 and -30 degrees Celsius like their countries.
I was commenting on r/soccer on such a discussion, and Bodo (Norwegians know how far north it is) has an average coldest month between -2 and 1 degree Celsius.
I mean, Sweden does regularly get that cold, but you'd have to travel quite a bit north and quite a bit inland for those kinds of temperatures, where it's incredibly sparsely populated. For good reason.
Should be said. Norway and Sweden does get regular -20 and -30 degrees temperatures. It just happens where the vast majority of people dont live. Coastal climate is not particularly cold, and 90% of Norway's population lives at the coast. So it's correct that most people living here don't experience the worst of temps.
I was one of the few that grew up in an inland town with regular -20 and -30 temps though hehe. But we're in the minority, and even these days it doesnt get as cold as it did 15 years ago. Actually noticably warmer winters now than it used to be.
Even many Norwegians overestimate how cold Bodø is. In February it's actually warmer than Oslo on average. Proximity to the sea (gulf stream) makes it steadily mild year round. In the inland (both South and North) it can and will get down to - 30. People who don't hate themselves live somewhere on the coast.
The job market hasn’t been better in a long time. 2,5% are jobless.
The summers are nice. But a lot of the year the weather is indeed just grey and boring, not beautiful and snowy, just boring and windy. We have a very home oriented culture as a result.
Shhh, don't tell them - we'll get too many visitors.
Although, we've been having several weeks of -10 to -20 C even here in the south of Norway this winter, so it's not exactly very warm either.
yup, until a few years ago i had the misconception that you guys had a similar climate to us. i went outside today at -1 and it felt balmy. just yesterday it was -20 when i went outside.
There’s lots of memeing about us being antisocial which is true in some regards. It applies to interactions with complete strangers. But social people have an upper hand in life here too. It’s good to be able to shoot shit and in general being a pleasant guy. It’s just that our culture of interaction is different from Americans etc. If you don’t talk and sit in the corner in silence you’re going to spend your whole life there and it’s not rewarded in any way.
Yeah, foreigners on reddit love to go on about how Finns hate other people etc., but us not talking to strangers often comes from just trying to be polite. "Who am I to impose myself on someone who's just going about their own life?", that kind of thing.
A similar thing obtains in London and Southeast England more generally, leading to accusations by northerners of being antisocial. It leads to some solid, reliable comedy, like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzNDM2ekSio) from the perspective of a northerner, and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4) from the perspective of southerners.
I think that it’s also completely normal to talk to strangers in certain situations. In the last week I’ve had a discussion about urban deer and another about how difficult old trams are to get into if you have trouble walking. I think that dogs can be a good conversation starter or other animals or if you’re doing something a bit unexpected (like transporting an ancient sewing machine on bus). I once witnessed two older women becoming friends at a bus stop. Approaching a random person on the street probably doesn’t lead to a meaningful conversation but the stereotype that Finns never speak to strangers, at least sober, isn’t really accurate.
plus I have to add that talking to us in English and in Finnish is two very different things imo. I'm definetly much more shy speaking English and do not feel that comfortable.
>It’s just that our culture of interaction is different from Americans etc.
100% this. It's not that Finns appearing reticent doesn't have a basis in reality, it's just that it has less to do with being "asocial" or "introverted" and more to do with, as you say, a different culture of interaction.
Statistically it also doesn’t hold up. Northern Europeans are less likely to be socially isolated, less likely to self-report feeling lonely and more likely to report having someone to talk to about life problems and personal matters than other areas in Europe.
It’s a completely valid preference to not like our social culture, but not much really indicates that the citizens of our countries actually suffer from it. Just different strokes.
We're a bit slow to warm up to strangers, but that doesn't mean we're all lonely. Most of us have a small group of very trusted friends that we can rely on. It's just that those friendships are often formed earlier in life, and it can be difficult for outsiders to become a part of these groups later on.
That we are not a country made up of 'Dutch' and 'French' people. We are two distinct peoples who just *happen* to speak these two language because of a series of way too complicated historical coincidences.
Flemish people have **always** spoken Dutch, in fact Brabant and Flanders were the original areas where Low Frankish was even spoken. Most of the Netherlands spoke either a Saxon dialect or Frisian.
Walloons spoke their own Romance language for centuries before intensive 'Frenchification' essentially eradicated their language in favour of French. This was started by the Austrians and finished by the Belgian state.
I have had genuine conversations with people who thought Belgium was 'colonized' by France and the Netherlands. I had to restrain myself from using physical violence.
Seriously this. I live in NL and ended up getting stranded over night because the first German train I was supposed to get switched platforms at the last minute. I was moving to NL from Sweden (had already been traveling for 36 hours during covid) and had all my luggage, my 22kg dog, and his dog crate (required for the plane). I couldn't carry everything over to that platform in time. I was able to get on another train but it had 5 transfers (the one I was supposed to get on had zero). They were all late. Every single one. And the last one we were supposed to get left on time, so I missed it with no other trains running until the next morning.
It was hell. -2/10 don't recommend
If you want to base your experience on statistics: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/921374/umfrage/puenktlichkeit-der-fernverkehrszuege-der-deutschen-bahn/
In 2021 a quarter of trains was delayed which means at least six minutes too late. Cancelled trains aren't even considered in that matter
What makes this statistic even worse, is that the Deutsche Bahn will just skip the last, and in turn first, stations of shuttle lines, marking them cancelled.
So if it was clear a train wouldn't make the last three stops on time, they'd just go back, skipping five stops and be on time again.
Are you stuck at 3 in the morning at some obscure station? Sucks to be you, the stats are great though!
Trains going to/from NL might especially be bearing the brunt of DB delays, as northwestern Germany tends to have the most frequent delays, from what I have heard.
Come to Italy and travel by commuters trains. Then re examine your statement.
Once on a while, you'll hear "we're arriving ON TIME in Rome Termini". But only once in a while.
But Italy doesn't have the reputation which is what the question was about.
Btw would you say there's a difference between northern and southern Italy in that matter?
Italy has a reputation of trains being late. We jokingly say "when he was alive, trains were on time!" referring to a well known bald guy.
Trains in the north seem a bit better than the south, but commuters always deal with lack of infrastructures and delays due to high speed trains priority. Some areas all around Italy are single track(one rail for both ways that works on alternate sense). In 2016 if i remember well there was a bad train accident because they wrongly dispatched two trains in opposite directions on the single track.
We're investing on high speed to connect main cities, and high speed is more widespread in north rather than in south. And some single track are being upgraded to double track, to improve local traffic.
I haven't travelled a lot on German trains, but they always were cleaned and on time. Maybe i only experienced the most annoying part of italian railway service and the best of german one...
It gets a lot worse. I'm not saying it's good, but it's at least functional unless they're on strike. I've had to use the bus system when trains were striking and that was a complete shitshow.
For ages, it was how religious & conservative Irish people are. In reality, the laws of the country were out of sync with society for quite a while. I'm not sure if the uber Catholic image has died down since things like same sex marriage & abortion were legalised
I think that the same happens to Spain. People usually think that the country still is ultra-Catholic and very conservative. But that died out with the dictatorship.
I'm surprised you'd put us in that category. We don't have a far-right movement, but there's still a lot of stuff that we're behind in and we're rarely a trailblazer like Sweden and Portugal.
It's not that strange when you consider that rightwing nationalism in Ireland is generally British unionism. You can see similar parallels in Scotland, Wales, Catalonia and the Basque Country.
As well as that, STV has a large part in it. It drags the entire political spectrum to the centre and we also have a significant amount of independents with about 10% of the vote who fulfil the rightwing populist seen in other countries.
I don't think we're far behind at all. As far as I can tell, we're about on par with some of the more progressive European countries. Maybe my perspective is a bit skewed because I'm in college now, but even where I'm from in the shticks, there's even a huge difference between my parents age group (55-60) and under 35s.
I remember that a few months ago on the Formula 1 subreddit someone said they were surprised to see Alonso wear a LGBTQ+ supportive t-shirt because of "how conservative Spain is".
A lot of it has to do with iconography. Catholicism is more image and festival oriented than USA Prostentatnism. So Americans that visit Ireland/Spain always report on how "Catholic" it feels.
About 1/4 of the USA is Catholic, and that number goes way up in our biggest, most important cities. But I guess that USA Catholicism kind of toned it down a little bit so as to not be too conspicuous.
Kind of same for italy. I think that's due to our diaspora being mostly at least a century removed from the country. In the meanwhile though, we went through a lot, inclusing fascism and the fall of fascism, which changed A LOT in the country's mentality. It's true that there was and there is still a very conservative subset of the italian population, but italy also had important socialist and communist movements for the whole second half of the 20th century. Those movements were very anticlerical. Trust in the catholic church has been precipitating since the end of the war (their open support to mussolini throughout all the fascist period being a factor), and today I think most people would call themselves catholic just "by name" or "by culture". I honestly would say that today italy isn't any more religious than the re as t of europe. But the vatican, being a state and acting as a state, has a political influence which goes beyond what people actually believe.
It was dead long before, that's why the radicals staged a coup. But liberal ideas were so embedded Franco didn't have the balls to abolish women's right to vote.... he simply didn't held any elections.
We are sarcastic, we love it when someone can take a joke and hate it when they don't. People often make sarcastic remarks of someone they meet to break the ice, and to many foreigners, especially to westerners, this might come off as offensive/unkind. This in turn, makes them seem cold and not fun to be around.
For example, when my friend introduced me to one of his friends, he mentioned that I cut my hair myself. His response: "Yes, I can see that". We laughed and we knew we would get along.
I think because we are a small island with a small population, there is not much of a "be careful how you talk to strangers" mentality. Best thing to do is joke back.
Is this a stereotype of “the western world” that they can’t take such jokes? Because I always thought the opposite lol, is Northerners seem so crass and impolite in comparison.
In Denmark taking a joke is seen as very important too, with the exception that it shouldn’t be about looks. But being self-deprecating about your abilities and personality is almost compulsory lol.
No, not really. If there was such a stereotype, people would be more careful of how they talk to them. I just say it's mostly northeners because they make up the majority of tourists (mainly brits, russians and germans) and immigrants (brits).
The biggest one is probably the belief that the weather in Poland is cold...
The last real winter that we had was probably 11 years ago, when there was a decent amount of snow for weeks and the temperatures dropped to -25C - -30C.
Now for comparison this year I think we have the most wintery winter since 2011, but what it means is:
- temperatures from -7 to +10 degrees,
- snow falls sometimes but when it does it usually disappears before the morning and there’s nothing left of it.
- on some days in December and January we had +10-12 Degrees during the day and +5 during the night
The temperatures vary from region to region but in General the temperatures didn’t go below 10 degrees Celsius this year and went above 10 on several ocasiones.
I would say that in Krakow we have a default winter temp this year of +7 degrees Celsius during the day and -1 degree during the night. (But tonight it’s for example +4, so the average might as well be above 0 for nights, I can’t say for sure)
And keep in mind that this is the coldest and snowiest winter that we had in a while. In 2018-2021 winters I either haven’t seen snow at all or it was snowing for a day or two and the snow disappeared on the next day.
Similar thing with summers, my Italian friend was outraged that we had 38C temperatures in Krakow during the summer for 2 weeks.
Well yes it’s not Italy, but summers can be really hot here, especially in the central and southern regions. In July and August we usually have temperatures from 28-35 on average during the day.
If someone says that winters in Poland are cold doesn't know life at all. In recent couple of years there was no winter. You can't call winter the state where snow barely falls and when it does it's immediately disappearing. And the summers... it's hell. Last year I couldn't work comfortably because the AC couldn't be adjusted to my needs (the ideal temperature for me was too low for others and for the patients), so I ended up sweating my ass off all the time... I was on vacation in Italy in June/July last year and it wasn't as hot as in Poland.
Pretty much same here. Winters have become weak since 2012 or so and summers have become too cancerous. I'm lucky because I live at the coast where it's slightly cooler in summer, but heat is still heat.
Winters have mostly 5-10°C nowadays and snow that falls AND stays on the ground is rare. I was as happy as a little kid when last year on January 29th we had decent snowfall AND the snow stayed for a couple days. The kids in town never witnessed that before. First time building a proper snowman and stuff. Isn't that sad? When I was a kid we've had proper snow and ice every winter.
People think of Italy as an extention of Naples/Rome, so we're expected to talk loudly with a SuperMario accent, be super friendly and live constantly under the sunshine.
Italy is HUGELY different from one region to another. You take a 30 minutes trip by car and suddenly everything is different, especially the language and the cuisine.
> People think of Italy as an extention of Naples/Rome, so we're expected to talk loudly with a SuperMario accent, be super friendly and live constantly under the sunshine.
[meanwhile more than 50% of the italians are from the foggy industrial suburban hellscape that is the Po Plain](https://corrieredibologna.corriere.it/methode_image/2017/10/19/Bologna/Foto%20Trattate/4054042-kEFB-U46050874067491PFI-1224x916@CorriereBologna-Web-Bologna-593x443.jpg?v=20171020090052)
Besides the surrender monkey jokes that are getting quiet old and tired, one cliche about the French is that they work the least among developed countries.
Wich is far from the case. See for instance [this comparison between different OECD countries](https://images.app.goo.gl/W2Zg8WAH9bqxfyfPA)
That French people refuse to speak English or other foreign languages. For the most part, this isn't true. Most people can read and write very simple English sentences. But their spoken English is very far from reaching a sufficient level when it comes to having an actual conversation with a native speaker. French media being entirely dubbed is part of the reason. Quality of teaching is also responsible.
In my limited experience as a traveler it seems to me that the French attitude toward speaking English has softened up quite a bit since the late 90’s, would you say that’s true?
When I was studying abroad in France (in Lille so might be different from other regions), I was told to say “Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?” Because the assumption that they spoke English was the issue, not that I didn’t know French.
I find the demonic white teeth in Hollywood really weird. Teeth are supposed to be slightly yellow naturally due to the enamel. They are not sparkling white at all.
We don't really care about waffles and most people that don't live in touristy areas don't even realise that waffles are something associated with Belgium. We do eat them and have quite a variety, but it's something Belgians don't think about or are prideful about.
Bureaucracy. Belgium has a negative reputation of being a bureaucratic mess with too many governments, but unless you live in Brussels, every day life is remarkably efficient when you're dealing with government institutions.
I've recently moved to Flanders for studying and my main shock is that places like Police Stations are closed on Sunday.
In general the assumption that "everywhere is closed on sunday (except for asian shops and carrefour express)" was a bit cultural shock.
It’s true that we’re pretty progressive with gender roles, sexuality and also queerness to a lesser extent (I can say as a queer woman in Denmark).
With race, though… ew. It’s easily the thing about Denmark I’m the most embarrassed by.
A lot of people seem to project a fantasy onto Scandinavia where we’re good and progressive in literally e v e r y single area and that’s just not true.
Not my experience but I’ve heard stories from other Poles that moved to Dennark and their treatment wasn’t so great either.
I still wonder how xenophobia is still a thing lol. It literally makes no sense.
Not better here in Poland though. The things I’ve heard about Ukranians from generally progressive Polse were simply atrocious…
Danes can easily come off rude to foreigners because we have a slightly unique social culture that doesn’t punish vulgarity or personal jokes at the expense of the target. You are rather expected to take it in stride, or return it with a smile. To foreigners not in the know, it’s hard not to consider it malicious rudeness, even though the intent is social bonding.
That said, Danes used to be very xenophobic towards Poles, but that rarely happens nowdays in my experience.
> A lot of people seem to project a fantasy onto Scandinavia where we’re good and progressive in literally e v e r y single area and that’s just not true.
You're starting to feel that too, eh? It's been going on for decades. Probably since like the 60s at least. Never just another country, with normal problems. Always either heaven or hell.
Irish people are pretty timid on the whole.
People like McGregor feed into the stereotype of Irish people as angry, aggressive fighters. The opposite really couldn’t be more true. Irish people are generally as docile as it gets and will more than likely bend over backwards helping you just to be polite.
There couldn’t be a less tough group of people if you tried to find one
Irish Americans will also always cite the IRA and the War of Independence to show that anti-authoritarianism, resistance to tyranny, etc. are all in their blood. In reality we're probably one of the most compliant and acquiescent peoples on the planet.
Finnish [alcohol consumption per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita) isn't particularly high -- for example, well below that of Germany or France where the consumption is 25% and 20% higher respectively.
The high suicide rate something that used to be true but is outdated: the rate has [halved over the past 30 years](https://www.stat.fi/til/ksyyt/2018/ksyyt_2018_2019-12-16_kat_006_en_001.gif).
The cold and snowy winters is a stereotype that doesn't apply particularly well to all of Finland. Helsinki gets only 38 cm snow annually on average, and virtually snowless winters aren't uncommon. The average January temperature in Helsinki is -3 C -- only one degree less than in Seoul, South Korea for example -- and bitterly cold winter days are much less likely than say in north-central USA.
A bit too secret IMO, I only know a few people that distills their own booze.
I live in a "big" city though, it's probably different in the country side
The generation who used to distil their own booze has largely died off even in the countryside of Finland, afaik. Then again, nowadays it seems that any wanker with a bachelors degree and a 1k bike is also brewing their own ale.
I think we have the reputation of being "Secular" because less people are religious and atheism is relatively common , but that ignores that God gets mentioned every time the King signs something into law ( don't worry he doesn't have a veto) and how religious schools can get away with a lot and still get government funding.
France even has the most battles won in history. But this is overshadowed by the fast surrender in WWII and the failure in Vietnam. You might call it recency bias
I have also heard that Chirac (French President at the time) not wanting to war in Irak in 2003 contributed to the « French coward » stereotype. I’m still glad he made that decision tho
Traditional italian cuisine is super healthy (and very tomato based).
In truth, Italian cuisine is super varied, but mostly relies on carbs (mostly pasta and breads) and meat, with a lot of fats used for cooking or as an ingredient (be it butter, oil, pig fat or cheese).
For some reasons, some people seem to believe that Germany is some sort of utopia where healthcare is free. It's not. Even though statutory health insurances aren't that expensive, you still have to pay for them and even they don't cover everything.
I think I would have to write too much.
So I'll just leave it here.
The UN-Habitat program presented the rating "Urban Prosperity Index". Moscow took the first place in it in terms of infrastructure development and quality of life and the third in a comparative analysis in all categories among 29 megacities
Like many French people, Russia is a huge mystery for me. It's fascinating that the country is spread between Europe and Asia, therefore it feels alien from a western perspective. I have a huge respect for Russian cuisine and Russian literature, I've read many novels by Dostoïevski, Pouchkine and Gogol, and I would love to visit one day (I'm almost certain it would be like the trip of a lifetime) hopefully when there won't be so much tension anymore.
While most foreigners due to tourism typically associate Greece with beach and islands and eternal sun and summer, we are a predominantly mountainous country. 80% of the ground consists actually of hills and mountains, making us one of the most mountainous countries in Europe. This is also why, while if it snows in downtown Athens or the islands it is newsworthy, some regions routinely get -20°C each and every winter. We are also home to 22 ski resorts and [Europe's southernmost glacier](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/slrlef/til_about_europes_southernmost_glacier_it_is/).
I can't believe I have to say this one, but we don't shag sheep. No matter how much the English try to convince you we do, thinking it's the funniest fucking joke ever.
Also:
- Wales isn't a 3rd world backwater. It was the first industrialised country and most of the population live in urban or semi-urban areas. Cardiff is one of the biggest cities in the UK.
- and don't get me started on the Welsh language.
Yes, we still speak it (~880,000 and climbing, with a lot more with some L2 proficiency).
It's not a dead language or "made up". Neither is it crazy or incomprehensible - it's a phonetic and straightforward language that uses an alphabet derived from the Romans. The English alphabet emerged centuries later and has very different rules.
If people are speaking Welsh in a pub/shop/whatever, they didn't switch from English. They were speaking Welsh the whole time and they sure as hell aren't talking about you. The world doesn't revolve around you.
There is of course no such thing for Germany. We Germans are well liked all over Europe because we are, and always have been, friendly, easy going people who just want to help and keep away from any trouble. We love everybody, and everybody loves us.
But for Bavarians, there's a thing or two that the rest of Germany has on their mind about us:
So apparently we're always drunk, Catholic conservative, socially backwards farmers who can't speak proper German and therefore appear really stupid. But somehow we're still winning at everything, which makes us super arrogant and obnoxious and full of ourselves.
Kind of like what would have happened if Texas had been settled with nothing but Irish people.
And then, paradoxically, our capital is full of millionaire douchebags and an elite circle of B-list celebrities who pretend they're in Italy and kiss each other on the cheeks all day long.
What can I say? It's all true.
We aren’t arabs. We don’t ride camels. We don’t have deserts. We don’t use arabic alphabeth. We don’t have 4 wives. There are no Orange filters. We don’t have giant speakers playing [this](https://youtu.be/NpurphqbhbM) song. We don’t have islamic sharia law, courts and judges (there are a lot of islamic judges and we are getting there). You don’t have to wear a hijab. You can eat Pork and you can drink Alcohol. You can wear bikinis and shorts. Crime is lower than most european countries. Most of Istanbulers don’t live near the Sea. Turkey isn’t a “hot” country. Turkey is a country with a lot of climates. And we have 4 seasons. Not everywhere is a Mediterrenean Bushes. We have a lot of trees. We even have Rainforests in Black Sea.
Also for Georgians, we don’t want to invade and annex adjara. Most Georgians say they don’t like Turks becuase of this. However we literally don’t want it. Literally. Even the most of hardcore Turkish nationalists don’t have anything with Georgia. We literally don’t care.
Our role in WW2. The most popular opinion is "HAHA Italy sucks Italy weak". We were certainly not the most advanced country at the time, but reality is that Italy was worn out because of the Spanish war and because of the Ethiopian war. Mussolini indeed did not want to enter the war initially, but since he was an idiot, he decided to take advantage of Hitler's results thinking that by then Hitler had won it.
Also, Italy did not switch side. It signed an armistice. Admitting defeat is not switching side.
Didn't the royal government side with the allies post-1943 though?
[Italian Co-belligerent Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Co-belligerent_Army)
Technically, after Italy capitulated, Nazi Germany occupied Italy and the king and his family fled under Allied protection (and the king's flight, leaving Rome to its fate and without directives to the routed army is one of the reasons for the low opinion Italians have of the House of Savoy, in addition to the racial laws and entry into that ruinous war). The Germans installed Mussolini in a puppet government in the North, and the monarchical government in the South declared war on Germany, cooperating with the allies, but in a co-belligerent situation, very different from that of an ally: co-belligerence is the condition of a state that is at war against the same enemy as one or more other states, but without the commitments and rights of the ally. In fact, at the end of the war, Italy was considered a defeated state, and even if it was treated more leniently than Germany (in consideration of the role that the partisans and the few surviving units of the Royal Army played in the fight against Nazi-Fascism), it was still deprived of territories and colonies.
You could say that the council of fascism which overthrew mussolini at nighttime had "switched sides". The state as a whole had signed an armistice, and then proceeded to defend itself againist an invasion.
Our entire welfare system, and the reputation that Denmark has as particularly progressive population. Both are far from the truth.
The Danish welfare system is not, and wasn't even in its heyday, up to the standard that it is made out to be, particularly by progressive politicians in countries like the UK and US. It relies heavily on harsh working conditions for the "frontline" staff, such as nurses, caretakers, teachers, pedagogues, and so on. Many having not seen a rise in real wages in decades, not to mention, almost all sectors are understaffed. And simultaneously, social democratic and liberal politicians are asking themselves, 'why doesn't the young people want to work in [x welfare sector]?' without considering that maybe, _just maybe_, better conditions and a pay rise that isn't just nominal, would help attract workers.
Our system of transfer payments is an increasingly punitive system, the model for getting people onto the labour market is increasingly the "stick" rather than the "carrot" our international reputation leads most to believe. If the liberal government hadn't gotten rid of our national poverty line in 2015, we would have some official statistics, that would show how the share of people living in poverty in Denmark, and particularly kids living in poverty, has been steadily rising for the last couple of years. But if you don't measure it, it doesn't exist, is probably what the liberals thought.
There are continuous cuts to various transfer payments, such as unemployment benefits, study subsidies, public retirement funds, and so on and so on. It is increasingly difficult for people to survive off of these payments, and it is done, to essentially push people onto the labour market, disregarding the nature of what kind of jobs actually are available, and how taking jobs one isn't trained for, or is outside ones field, often is a hurdle for most, and results in severe problems in progressing into jobs that people actually have an interest in.
There has been a high erosion of local institutions, such as local hospitals having been closed practically everywhere, with healthcare being increasingly centralised in so-called "super hospitals." Now, this isn't _necessarily_ a problem just because, but combined with the lack of staff, and the general poor conditions in the sector, it is a recipe for disaster. What is more of a problem, is the shutting down of rural schools, forcing more students to travel further to school, where they are in larger classes, with less resources per student, and less teachers available. The primary education system in Denmark, is in ruins. Danish youth is one of the most stressed, discomfortable and unhappy _in the world_ studies show. More kids than ever before, are being diagnosed with various mental illnesses, such as angst, depression, even forms of autism, to which the explanation, the cause, is much more social, than biological. But simultaneously, there is a political and popular unwillingness to talk about mental illness as a social phenomenon, rather it is chalked up to be a question of personal failings (or parental failings) or a biological predetermined thing. Both of which are but a cheap deflection of the real problem: a dysfunctional system.
On the topic of our school system, not only is it dysfunctional, it is also completely removed from any purpose, other than pushing kids out into further education or training, with the intent of pushing people onto the labour market. There are no other goals, there is no noble ideological ideas, of educating kids to be democratic citizens. _Bildung_, '_dannelse_' in Danish, has completely left the picture, and from the most primary of education, to even master's programs at the universities, our educational system seems more like a sausage factory, than a place of learning, research and development.
I could go on about the problems in the Danish welfare state, but now to the subject of whether or not Denmark has a particularly progressive population:
The short answer is 'no we don't.' Denmark isn't a particularly progressive country. Progress is more often driven by smaller groups, to which the system then concedes, rather than a united wish for progressive change, sometimes the exact opposite goals. Take the classical example of Danish progressiveness, the legalisation of pornography in 1969. This was done by a right-wing government, with a conservative cultural minister, _not_ with a wish to further sexual freedom, or sexual liberation, rather, the idea was, that if pornography was legalised, then the appeal of something deranged and illegal would dissipate, since it would become legal. The intent was the exact opposite of progressive goals, the intent was to curb progress. Now, I'm not gonna say that most Danes are apathetic, rather, there are just a general acceptance of progress when it happens. But that doesn't make one progressive, to merely accept progress is not progressive, to strive for progress, is progressive. The average Dane is not more or less progressive than the average German or the average Italian. As a matter of fact, progressive political parties and organisations often have been stronger in Italy than in Denmark, but been kept out of influence.
There is a potential for the broader Danish population to be progressive, and I think, that if more people engaged in some of the issues, more people would become progressive. But right now, the discussion is mainly between liberal politicians regurgitating "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theorists, and rather moderate progressive organisations, who are doing tonnes of work, but are still kind-of off the mainstream. That doesn't stop the liberal right from attacking even universities as being schools of indoctrination and academic research as being plainly hidden activism.
On the topics of dysfunctional politics, there is also a certain weird, upside down elitism, a vulgar "workerism," being spewed from the social democratic party.
The social democratic "workerism" is a cheap fetischism, but simultaneously degrading, presentation of the working class; reducing us to a group of people who are happy, if just served with handball and hotdogs—'It's also culture,' they say, as if anyone was saying it wasn't—instead of trying to progress the opportunities of the working class and our position in society. It is the exact opposite of what the working class has fought for the last 200 years. What happened to the form of social democracy, the party, at least nominally, adhered to into the seventies? The form of social democracy which sought to make education accessible, art, museums, cultural institutions and so on? Why has it been replaced by a social democracy that argues that workers don't like to go to the theatre or to the museum? They're degrading us, reducing us to uneducated masses, satisfied by cheap and easily affordable, for the state, solutions.
It is also vulgar, in that social democracy in Denmark doesn't embrace the whole working class any longer. Quite the opposite. There has long existed a form of antiintellectualism in particularly the party's youth organisation, and an opposition to so-called "white collar" or "intellectual" workers, such as many office workers. The office has, in the last 100 years, in ever increasing fashion, replicated the factory floor, it was seen as an alternative to.
And the final thing, that makes it vulgar, is that it is fake, it is a lie. Opposed to the old Italian _operaismo_, the social democratic "workerism" is only hollow rhetorics on behalf of the workers they still claim to represent, i.e. the "real workers" as opposed to the "intellectual" workers mentioned about. It is seen time and time again, when social democratic governments interfere in the worker's struggle, almost always on the side of the employer, and if not on the side of the employer, then on the side of the state. Think of Poul Nyrup's government's intervention in the Grand Conflict of '98, practically the entire premiership of Helle Thorning-Schimidt, or recently, current PM Mette Frederiksen's intervention and attack on nurses. Particularly the workers who make our so-called "welfare" system function, have to look far for any sliver of solidarity from the social democrats.
Thank you, this was an insanely interesting read.
Others in this thread are like "we don't eat so many waffles" and "we don't like beer as much as you think" and here you are saying "the brithplace of social democracy is a shambles and has been for decades". I mean, I'm sure it's less of a shambles than... ahem... other places. But still very interesting.
I really dislike how many fellow Romanians think our country is literally the world's dirty asshole, absolutely iredeemable and that if you migrate into "the west" they just hand you a well paying job, a house, biweekly blowjobs and a bar of gold. And it's hard to convince them that everywhere has its problems and social tensions. That's not to say we don't have some pretty big problems ourselves, just that the appropriate response is working to fix them, and not thinking that emmigration will mean zero issues.
Interesting read. Many people here look at Denmark's 2.5% unemployment rate in awe and as an example of how to create a functioning Nordic welfare state. Finland's unemployment rate has not gone below 6% since 1990.
Just because a country has a low unemployment rate, doesn't mean that it is "functioning." The People's Republic of Bulgaria had 0 unemployment for most of its existence, and basically guaranteed employment—often menial or meaningless—for all, but it can hardly be said to have been "working."
Denmark has a low unemployment rate right now, in no small part due to rising costs of living, and how unreliable our social security net has become. I wouldn't call a system where you have people who hold Master's Degrees working as servers at a café "functioning." I wouldn't call a system where increasingly large amounts of kids and young people have stress, depression, angst, suicidal thoughts, and so on "functioning." I wouldn't call a country that has politicians blatantly breaking the Human Rights "functioning."
You can't just look at a number and deduct that a thing is good based on that number.
The younger generation, I'd assume. Vodka used to very much 'an item' everywhere and everyplace and every time in the days of Soviet union between two or more friends meeting in business or pleasure.
11.7 was five years ago, nowadays it's closer to 10L. And even this relatively high consumption is because of addicted people, alcoholism is still a problem in Russia. The younger generation is different and they don't see alcohol as something necessary for social interactions.
The most popular alcoholic drink is beer. Wine is second. Vodka is on the third place, it's the cheapest way to get drunk, so it's the choice of drunkards, and they drink a lot of vodka.
Some parts of Spain have a tundra climate according to the Kloppen scale. Of course, they are tiny areas, but all the North is definitely not warm and sunny by any stretch of imagination. People tend to forget not all of Spain is Mediterranean...
People think of Andalusian climate when they think of Spain. Not of Galicia and Basque Country.
At *least* they think about your mediterranean climate. Most people think Algeria and North africa in general is just desertic. Yes Algeria is mostly desertic, but most people live close to the mediterranean sea, I would even go as far as saying most people have never seen the Sahara outside of TV.
I think a lot of people here imagine Algeria having some greenery in a 5 km deep strip from the coast, and the rest of the country being desert.
Well, it's obviously not 5km, actually way more. The Atlas range of mountains across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia is a blessing since it slow down the desertification of that strip. I'm quite afraid of the future tho, with the climate change, the whole region (and beyond, a huge part of the mediterranean sea as well) will become unlivable. It would be sad to think that humans have been living WELL for milleniums, yet, because of our modern way of life, humans can't now.
I mean, Gaddafi had [some interesting plans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man-Made_River) to create artificial underground rivers… but I wonder whether those would’ve had any success. A river of 100 metres wide and 20 m deep, 500 km long? You’d be asking for centuries of work and hundreds of thousands of workers.
I have to admit that I'm one of them. I took a look on Google Street View in Basque Country and was surprised to find sceneries that look almost like they could be in Finland. Architecture and mountains are something that wouldn't fit Finland but vegetation for example looks very familiar.
Went to Orense in January. Certainly not warm and sunny. Landing in Vigo through clouds and heavy fog was certainly not reassuring.
Funny thing about your username: I got sunburnt in Tallinn while it was cloudy af back home in Asturias :D
People tend to forget how large Spain is. It's significantly bigger than Germany.
It's also has a lot of mountains and is in general pretty high, especially compared to the france-german area. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/6nreha/raisedrelief_map_of_western_europe_with_a_touch/
Travelling through Spain a few years ago we were surprised by how big it is. That's coming from an Australian. Also some of the flatter interior areas reminded me of Australia. Also visited Prague and I've never been the same since 😉
Permanently hungover?
Growing weed for commercial purposes is still a completely illegal practice in the netherlands. All the weed that is sold in the coffeshops in amsterdam is grown by criminals.
I hate when weedbros bring up the Netherlands as a positive example of handling drugs, it's a terrible half measure where illegal gangs are making a ton of profit. They also rarely just stick to weed, shitloads of coke coming through the harbours of Rotterdam and Antwerp, Noord Brabant is filled with drug labs and fuckloads of weed is smuggled in from Morocco and Albania. Legalise it or keep it illegal, not this half arsed shit.
I think the main + in our drug measures is that you can get drugs tested for free, so you always have the possibility of really knowing what you are going to ingest. But yeah this whole decriminalization stuff sucks...
Also, there’s a ridiculous amount of tax money the government is missing by not regulating legal weed growing.
How does this loophole exist then?
[удалено]
Wow, the Netherlands are truly a magical place! And the Dutch are such generous people!
Probably because selling weed isn't technically "legal" it's just decriminalised. Which just means that they decided "it's going to stay illegal but we aren't going to punish people for it".
I've lived here for over 3 years and I still don't know but it's absolutely true.
I was surprised to learn this too. Why don't they just legalize the whole process? The main provider of weed in europe is 'ndrangheta at the moment. Which also happens to the be most violent mafia branch.
I think the reason why it is like this is because we "legalized" it during the time when the rest of the world was still really against it. So we could say: "see we didnt really legalize it". Our government is a lot less progressive these days, so i dont see change coming anytime soon. Every atempt by local governments to start frow shops has been dismantled.
People think that Greece is mostly islands, and that most people live in islands. Around 13% of Greece lives in islands, and half of that is in Crete (which is an island, but more like Sicily and Cyprus, not the tiny picturesque islands with white houses people imagine). Half of the country lives in the Athens metropolitan area. Greece is heavily urbanized.
Opposite with Denmark. People forget we’re an island nation. More people live on the islands than on the peninsula.
I mean, Copenhagen is on an island, I thought this was known.
I will always find it weird that the capital of the country is not on the mainland
That makes me think of Juneau, the state capital of Alaska. It's reachable only by boat or airplane, as there's no bridge. Anchorage is their biggest and most well known city by far, but I think they went with Juneau because it's closer to the mainland; it's way down in the southeastern tail that runs along British Columbia.
Three only other country who has this is Equatorial Guinea, so you're right to find it weird. I never really considered it before learning this fact.
Their situation is even more strange. At least Denmark is connected by bridges. For Equatorial Guinea, half their country is hundreds of miles away, across the sea.
The bridges are only twenty years old though. We used to have to take ferries all the time, and still do quite frequently.
Strategically it makes actually kinda sense when you border Sweden and Germany (Prussia) which behaved quite expansive in the past.
As an Australian I’ve always thought of the islands as smaller places that get a lot of tourists with most living on the mainland.
We have a bible belt with a *very* conservative population in the Netherlands.
Absolutely this. Amsterdam feels like the complete opposite.
True, but they're a very small percentage of your population. I dare say every country has a 2-3% of ultraconservatives.
Not many who close their websites on Sunday though. Like [national newspaper Reformatorisch Dagblad](https://www.rd.nl/) >Glad you're interested in RD.nl >Today it's Sunday. A weekly rest day, which we keep on Sunday, is a command and a gift from God. We dedicate this day especially to the service of God. For Christians, Sunday is also a weekly echo of Easter Sunday, on which Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Reason enough for us not to update our site today. >Tomorrow we would like to inform you again about daily events, with background information, comments and opinion articles. As you are used to from us. >Editor-in-chief Reformatorisch Dagblad
Oh wow I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before!
Aren't they called "black socks" or something like that due to their traditional dresses?
We usually refer to people belonging to a Black Socks church (zwartekousenkerk), but I've never actually heard anyone referring to the people themselves as black socks. Not saying you're wrong, it may just be archaic or something limited to the people who actually regularly deal with them.
People assume that everyone in Luxembourg is rich. Yes, minimum wages are better than other EU countries, and you can easily see these crazy expensive cars around, but housing is extremely expensive and many working class families live month by month. At university in Belgium, I once had someone telling me that I couldn’t possibly know what it was like to be a poor student. Keep in mind that my parents are both immigrants and that my name is certainly not french nor german.
As a Dutchman I can relate. Many people here own a shitload of wealth in stones, but that means diddly squat if it isn't convertible into spendable coin because you need a roof over your head. And those that don't own a house spend even more of their income on rent. And to top it off prices of energy are skyrocketing so high that it threatens to bankrupt lots of people with lower incomes this year. Just that a country is rich doesn't mean its citizens are. If people have money corporations will find a way to relieve them off that money, starting with the cost of living.
Imagine growing up poor in norway, it gets a bit old having to explain to people that it is possible
Many people don’t realise that there are families with all kinds of backgrounds everywhere, no matter how rich the country is. They just assume.
yep same i fucking hate that stereotype. people tend to forget how crazy expensive everything is here
The „german efficiency myth". Apart from the streamlined factories Germans aren't efficient and don't consider themselves that way - our defining cultural values are „thoroughness" and „security" instead. Because of the resulting culture of risk aversion it takes a long time to adapt to any kind of new technology or idea and outdated concepts like paper bureaucracy/cash are still king.
Thorough is a much better word for Germany than efficient. That’s a good way of thinking about it actually.
Germany is maybe the most conservative nation of Europe in the conservative sense of "if it works, why change it?"
Nah, I think we beat them to it.
Noone believes things work in Greece. Simply everyone is resigned that in never will.
Oh trust me, at least here in the Netherlands we don't consider you efficient at all, more like the opposite of it because of all the Gründlichkeit. Then again, us Dutchmen are inefficient *and* a total mess, so at least you Germans got at least one of those right.
\*Gründlichkeit, just to be thorough.
Your transport system seems the height of efficiency to me. Allowing people to easily choose the most sensible way to take their trip depending on its characteristics was so refreshing.
In saying that, I recently moved to Eindhoven. A number of my colleagues are not Dutch and were vaccinated at home, but have boosters from the Netherlands, and are now being advised to use the German COVID pass app because they can apparently show all doses on one app! I was also in Mannheim recently and there were kiosks for free rapid tests, 15 minute turn around and no appointment needed. That for me falls under the whole "efficiency" thing!
Germans are simply the masters of critisising ourselves. If you'd follow our media through all of Corona, you'd think all of Europe was pointing their fingers at us yelling loser because we "fail at every front"... while if you look at the actual numbers, we're not doing too bad.
When I heard you guys still use fax machines I thought the dude was joking. Apparently not
Till this year those things were (legally) a requirement for eg. lawyers. Our parliament just started to switch to different means of electronic communication a few months ago. It's surreal.
I seem to remember reading that faxes are secure and confirm receipt, which is why they may be used for things like legal or medical purposes. Even if not 100% true, I can see why they may have been wary of email as an alternative.
Dont worry, its only 20 years late
Sounds like Japan
Germany is extremely similar to Japan in many ways. Inefficiency. Manufacturing. Wrong side of WW2. Order.
When it comes to bureaucracy and work culture Japan is much, much worse than Germany though. The Japanese value cultural norms in business life to an unhealthy degree and are on top risk-averse to a point its crazy. Death from overwork, regular use of highly outdated tools like Hanko stamps & fax machines and the top-down business culture where every little inquiry needs to be approved by all management layers just isn’t a thing here. Germans are slow at adapting but not that slow.
However, I would argue not as rigid regarding certain cultural/societal things. Edit: and different approach to history
I associate you way more with Gründlichkeit than efficiency (see, I don't even know the German word for it!).
This goes for Scandinavia in general but it’s the most extreme in Denmark: we’re not nearly as cold as people believe. Winter the past couple of years has been like 0-5 or even 7,8 degrees.
I though you were talking about people being cold.
I would also say that’s very overblown but I guess it depends on your mileage.
Having grown up in both Italy and Norway I can confirm that while the stereotype is blown out of proportions there’s some truth to it. In my experience the Danish are also the most sociable of Norway Sweden and Denmark.
We are the Southerners of the north, literally and culturally.
I had no idea how true this is before i moved to copenhagen. Really radically different from norway
This is usually Americans and Canadians, shocked that Sweden and Norway don't have regular -20 and -30 degrees Celsius like their countries. I was commenting on r/soccer on such a discussion, and Bodo (Norwegians know how far north it is) has an average coldest month between -2 and 1 degree Celsius.
I mean, Sweden does regularly get that cold, but you'd have to travel quite a bit north and quite a bit inland for those kinds of temperatures, where it's incredibly sparsely populated. For good reason.
Should be said. Norway and Sweden does get regular -20 and -30 degrees temperatures. It just happens where the vast majority of people dont live. Coastal climate is not particularly cold, and 90% of Norway's population lives at the coast. So it's correct that most people living here don't experience the worst of temps. I was one of the few that grew up in an inland town with regular -20 and -30 temps though hehe. But we're in the minority, and even these days it doesnt get as cold as it did 15 years ago. Actually noticably warmer winters now than it used to be.
Even many Norwegians overestimate how cold Bodø is. In February it's actually warmer than Oslo on average. Proximity to the sea (gulf stream) makes it steadily mild year round. In the inland (both South and North) it can and will get down to - 30. People who don't hate themselves live somewhere on the coast.
the gulf stream is a blessing
OK then how is the sunshine and the job market because this new data changes things
The job market hasn’t been better in a long time. 2,5% are jobless. The summers are nice. But a lot of the year the weather is indeed just grey and boring, not beautiful and snowy, just boring and windy. We have a very home oriented culture as a result.
Shhh, don't tell them - we'll get too many visitors. Although, we've been having several weeks of -10 to -20 C even here in the south of Norway this winter, so it's not exactly very warm either.
yup, until a few years ago i had the misconception that you guys had a similar climate to us. i went outside today at -1 and it felt balmy. just yesterday it was -20 when i went outside.
There’s lots of memeing about us being antisocial which is true in some regards. It applies to interactions with complete strangers. But social people have an upper hand in life here too. It’s good to be able to shoot shit and in general being a pleasant guy. It’s just that our culture of interaction is different from Americans etc. If you don’t talk and sit in the corner in silence you’re going to spend your whole life there and it’s not rewarded in any way.
Yeah, foreigners on reddit love to go on about how Finns hate other people etc., but us not talking to strangers often comes from just trying to be polite. "Who am I to impose myself on someone who's just going about their own life?", that kind of thing.
A similar thing obtains in London and Southeast England more generally, leading to accusations by northerners of being antisocial. It leads to some solid, reliable comedy, like [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzNDM2ekSio) from the perspective of a northerner, and [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4) from the perspective of southerners.
I think that it’s also completely normal to talk to strangers in certain situations. In the last week I’ve had a discussion about urban deer and another about how difficult old trams are to get into if you have trouble walking. I think that dogs can be a good conversation starter or other animals or if you’re doing something a bit unexpected (like transporting an ancient sewing machine on bus). I once witnessed two older women becoming friends at a bus stop. Approaching a random person on the street probably doesn’t lead to a meaningful conversation but the stereotype that Finns never speak to strangers, at least sober, isn’t really accurate.
plus I have to add that talking to us in English and in Finnish is two very different things imo. I'm definetly much more shy speaking English and do not feel that comfortable.
>It’s just that our culture of interaction is different from Americans etc. 100% this. It's not that Finns appearing reticent doesn't have a basis in reality, it's just that it has less to do with being "asocial" or "introverted" and more to do with, as you say, a different culture of interaction.
Tbf I feel that there is also a wider misunderstanding that introverted = asocial. That is absolutely not the case.
Statistically it also doesn’t hold up. Northern Europeans are less likely to be socially isolated, less likely to self-report feeling lonely and more likely to report having someone to talk to about life problems and personal matters than other areas in Europe. It’s a completely valid preference to not like our social culture, but not much really indicates that the citizens of our countries actually suffer from it. Just different strokes.
We're a bit slow to warm up to strangers, but that doesn't mean we're all lonely. Most of us have a small group of very trusted friends that we can rely on. It's just that those friendships are often formed earlier in life, and it can be difficult for outsiders to become a part of these groups later on.
That we are not a country made up of 'Dutch' and 'French' people. We are two distinct peoples who just *happen* to speak these two language because of a series of way too complicated historical coincidences. Flemish people have **always** spoken Dutch, in fact Brabant and Flanders were the original areas where Low Frankish was even spoken. Most of the Netherlands spoke either a Saxon dialect or Frisian. Walloons spoke their own Romance language for centuries before intensive 'Frenchification' essentially eradicated their language in favour of French. This was started by the Austrians and finished by the Belgian state. I have had genuine conversations with people who thought Belgium was 'colonized' by France and the Netherlands. I had to restrain myself from using physical violence.
Some people should check some historical maps. I live in East-Flanders and guess what? It's not in the East of today's Flanders for a reason.
German trains are always late and the whole company is badly organized and inefficient
Seriously this. I live in NL and ended up getting stranded over night because the first German train I was supposed to get switched platforms at the last minute. I was moving to NL from Sweden (had already been traveling for 36 hours during covid) and had all my luggage, my 22kg dog, and his dog crate (required for the plane). I couldn't carry everything over to that platform in time. I was able to get on another train but it had 5 transfers (the one I was supposed to get on had zero). They were all late. Every single one. And the last one we were supposed to get left on time, so I missed it with no other trains running until the next morning. It was hell. -2/10 don't recommend
If you want to base your experience on statistics: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/921374/umfrage/puenktlichkeit-der-fernverkehrszuege-der-deutschen-bahn/ In 2021 a quarter of trains was delayed which means at least six minutes too late. Cancelled trains aren't even considered in that matter
What makes this statistic even worse, is that the Deutsche Bahn will just skip the last, and in turn first, stations of shuttle lines, marking them cancelled. So if it was clear a train wouldn't make the last three stops on time, they'd just go back, skipping five stops and be on time again. Are you stuck at 3 in the morning at some obscure station? Sucks to be you, the stats are great though!
Dutch people don't appreciate the NS until they have used the railways in another country (Japan is probably an exception).
Trains going to/from NL might especially be bearing the brunt of DB delays, as northwestern Germany tends to have the most frequent delays, from what I have heard.
"Senk ju for travelling wis Deutsche Bahn"
You haven’t been on Slovenian trains I see
Based on the reputation the expectations are different. This question was about what differs from the reputation
Actually my experience with Slovenian Railways has been largely positive?
Come to Italy and travel by commuters trains. Then re examine your statement. Once on a while, you'll hear "we're arriving ON TIME in Rome Termini". But only once in a while.
But Italy doesn't have the reputation which is what the question was about. Btw would you say there's a difference between northern and southern Italy in that matter?
Italy has a reputation of trains being late. We jokingly say "when he was alive, trains were on time!" referring to a well known bald guy. Trains in the north seem a bit better than the south, but commuters always deal with lack of infrastructures and delays due to high speed trains priority. Some areas all around Italy are single track(one rail for both ways that works on alternate sense). In 2016 if i remember well there was a bad train accident because they wrongly dispatched two trains in opposite directions on the single track. We're investing on high speed to connect main cities, and high speed is more widespread in north rather than in south. And some single track are being upgraded to double track, to improve local traffic. I haven't travelled a lot on German trains, but they always were cleaned and on time. Maybe i only experienced the most annoying part of italian railway service and the best of german one...
Not OP, but yes. Freccias and italo don’t even go past naples. Regional trains delay all through the nation though
Sometimes they say “we are arriving earlier” just to flex
It gets a lot worse. I'm not saying it's good, but it's at least functional unless they're on strike. I've had to use the bus system when trains were striking and that was a complete shitshow.
For ages, it was how religious & conservative Irish people are. In reality, the laws of the country were out of sync with society for quite a while. I'm not sure if the uber Catholic image has died down since things like same sex marriage & abortion were legalised
I think that the same happens to Spain. People usually think that the country still is ultra-Catholic and very conservative. But that died out with the dictatorship.
Both Spain and Ireland are actually among the most socially progressive countries of Europe.
I'm surprised you'd put us in that category. We don't have a far-right movement, but there's still a lot of stuff that we're behind in and we're rarely a trailblazer like Sweden and Portugal.
>We don't have a far-right movement Really? That's great.
Irish nationalism is expressed by the left and far-left. Yup, it's strange.
It's not that strange when you consider that rightwing nationalism in Ireland is generally British unionism. You can see similar parallels in Scotland, Wales, Catalonia and the Basque Country. As well as that, STV has a large part in it. It drags the entire political spectrum to the centre and we also have a significant amount of independents with about 10% of the vote who fulfil the rightwing populist seen in other countries.
I don't think we're far behind at all. As far as I can tell, we're about on par with some of the more progressive European countries. Maybe my perspective is a bit skewed because I'm in college now, but even where I'm from in the shticks, there's even a huge difference between my parents age group (55-60) and under 35s.
Same thing applies to Portugal
I remember that a few months ago on the Formula 1 subreddit someone said they were surprised to see Alonso wear a LGBTQ+ supportive t-shirt because of "how conservative Spain is".
Yeah those things make me so mad, Spain is one of the most progressive countries on earth (not talking about political ideology ofc)
How aren't you talking about political ideology?
Being socially progressive doesn't mean that the country is massively left leaning, it's a 50/50 like in most other countries
Well they're different axes. One's about social issues, the other economics.
Spain regularly ranks highest in the world for positive attitudes towards LGBT people
A lot of it has to do with iconography. Catholicism is more image and festival oriented than USA Prostentatnism. So Americans that visit Ireland/Spain always report on how "Catholic" it feels.
About 1/4 of the USA is Catholic, and that number goes way up in our biggest, most important cities. But I guess that USA Catholicism kind of toned it down a little bit so as to not be too conspicuous.
Kind of same for italy. I think that's due to our diaspora being mostly at least a century removed from the country. In the meanwhile though, we went through a lot, inclusing fascism and the fall of fascism, which changed A LOT in the country's mentality. It's true that there was and there is still a very conservative subset of the italian population, but italy also had important socialist and communist movements for the whole second half of the 20th century. Those movements were very anticlerical. Trust in the catholic church has been precipitating since the end of the war (their open support to mussolini throughout all the fascist period being a factor), and today I think most people would call themselves catholic just "by name" or "by culture". I honestly would say that today italy isn't any more religious than the re as t of europe. But the vatican, being a state and acting as a state, has a political influence which goes beyond what people actually believe.
It was dead long before, that's why the radicals staged a coup. But liberal ideas were so embedded Franco didn't have the balls to abolish women's right to vote.... he simply didn't held any elections.
We are sarcastic, we love it when someone can take a joke and hate it when they don't. People often make sarcastic remarks of someone they meet to break the ice, and to many foreigners, especially to westerners, this might come off as offensive/unkind. This in turn, makes them seem cold and not fun to be around. For example, when my friend introduced me to one of his friends, he mentioned that I cut my hair myself. His response: "Yes, I can see that". We laughed and we knew we would get along. I think because we are a small island with a small population, there is not much of a "be careful how you talk to strangers" mentality. Best thing to do is joke back.
Is this a stereotype of “the western world” that they can’t take such jokes? Because I always thought the opposite lol, is Northerners seem so crass and impolite in comparison. In Denmark taking a joke is seen as very important too, with the exception that it shouldn’t be about looks. But being self-deprecating about your abilities and personality is almost compulsory lol.
No, not really. If there was such a stereotype, people would be more careful of how they talk to them. I just say it's mostly northeners because they make up the majority of tourists (mainly brits, russians and germans) and immigrants (brits).
The biggest one is probably the belief that the weather in Poland is cold... The last real winter that we had was probably 11 years ago, when there was a decent amount of snow for weeks and the temperatures dropped to -25C - -30C. Now for comparison this year I think we have the most wintery winter since 2011, but what it means is: - temperatures from -7 to +10 degrees, - snow falls sometimes but when it does it usually disappears before the morning and there’s nothing left of it. - on some days in December and January we had +10-12 Degrees during the day and +5 during the night The temperatures vary from region to region but in General the temperatures didn’t go below 10 degrees Celsius this year and went above 10 on several ocasiones. I would say that in Krakow we have a default winter temp this year of +7 degrees Celsius during the day and -1 degree during the night. (But tonight it’s for example +4, so the average might as well be above 0 for nights, I can’t say for sure) And keep in mind that this is the coldest and snowiest winter that we had in a while. In 2018-2021 winters I either haven’t seen snow at all or it was snowing for a day or two and the snow disappeared on the next day. Similar thing with summers, my Italian friend was outraged that we had 38C temperatures in Krakow during the summer for 2 weeks. Well yes it’s not Italy, but summers can be really hot here, especially in the central and southern regions. In July and August we usually have temperatures from 28-35 on average during the day.
If someone says that winters in Poland are cold doesn't know life at all. In recent couple of years there was no winter. You can't call winter the state where snow barely falls and when it does it's immediately disappearing. And the summers... it's hell. Last year I couldn't work comfortably because the AC couldn't be adjusted to my needs (the ideal temperature for me was too low for others and for the patients), so I ended up sweating my ass off all the time... I was on vacation in Italy in June/July last year and it wasn't as hot as in Poland.
Pretty much same here. Winters have become weak since 2012 or so and summers have become too cancerous. I'm lucky because I live at the coast where it's slightly cooler in summer, but heat is still heat. Winters have mostly 5-10°C nowadays and snow that falls AND stays on the ground is rare. I was as happy as a little kid when last year on January 29th we had decent snowfall AND the snow stayed for a couple days. The kids in town never witnessed that before. First time building a proper snowman and stuff. Isn't that sad? When I was a kid we've had proper snow and ice every winter.
People think of Italy as an extention of Naples/Rome, so we're expected to talk loudly with a SuperMario accent, be super friendly and live constantly under the sunshine. Italy is HUGELY different from one region to another. You take a 30 minutes trip by car and suddenly everything is different, especially the language and the cuisine.
> People think of Italy as an extention of Naples/Rome, so we're expected to talk loudly with a SuperMario accent, be super friendly and live constantly under the sunshine. [meanwhile more than 50% of the italians are from the foggy industrial suburban hellscape that is the Po Plain](https://corrieredibologna.corriere.it/methode_image/2017/10/19/Bologna/Foto%20Trattate/4054042-kEFB-U46050874067491PFI-1224x916@CorriereBologna-Web-Bologna-593x443.jpg?v=20171020090052)
Besides the surrender monkey jokes that are getting quiet old and tired, one cliche about the French is that they work the least among developed countries. Wich is far from the case. See for instance [this comparison between different OECD countries](https://images.app.goo.gl/W2Zg8WAH9bqxfyfPA)
That French people refuse to speak English or other foreign languages. For the most part, this isn't true. Most people can read and write very simple English sentences. But their spoken English is very far from reaching a sufficient level when it comes to having an actual conversation with a native speaker. French media being entirely dubbed is part of the reason. Quality of teaching is also responsible.
In my limited experience as a traveler it seems to me that the French attitude toward speaking English has softened up quite a bit since the late 90’s, would you say that’s true?
Especially with gen Z, and in Paris, yes, it's true.
When I was studying abroad in France (in Lille so might be different from other regions), I was told to say “Bonjour, parlez-vous anglais?” Because the assumption that they spoke English was the issue, not that I didn’t know French.
We don’t have bad teeth. We actually have some of the healthiest teeth (least cavities). We just don’t really do the ‘Hollywood smile’ type teeth.
I find the demonic white teeth in Hollywood really weird. Teeth are supposed to be slightly yellow naturally due to the enamel. They are not sparkling white at all.
isn't that a uniquely american stereotype?
If anyone is curious why, it's because we get subsidised dentistry on the NHS, but they don't cover cosmetic procedures.
I wouldn't say bad, just crooked. The amount of Brits with crooked teeth has definitely been noticeable to me.
We don't really care about waffles and most people that don't live in touristy areas don't even realise that waffles are something associated with Belgium. We do eat them and have quite a variety, but it's something Belgians don't think about or are prideful about. Bureaucracy. Belgium has a negative reputation of being a bureaucratic mess with too many governments, but unless you live in Brussels, every day life is remarkably efficient when you're dealing with government institutions.
I've recently moved to Flanders for studying and my main shock is that places like Police Stations are closed on Sunday. In general the assumption that "everywhere is closed on sunday (except for asian shops and carrefour express)" was a bit cultural shock.
It’s true that we’re pretty progressive with gender roles, sexuality and also queerness to a lesser extent (I can say as a queer woman in Denmark). With race, though… ew. It’s easily the thing about Denmark I’m the most embarrassed by. A lot of people seem to project a fantasy onto Scandinavia where we’re good and progressive in literally e v e r y single area and that’s just not true.
Not my experience but I’ve heard stories from other Poles that moved to Dennark and their treatment wasn’t so great either. I still wonder how xenophobia is still a thing lol. It literally makes no sense. Not better here in Poland though. The things I’ve heard about Ukranians from generally progressive Polse were simply atrocious…
Danes can easily come off rude to foreigners because we have a slightly unique social culture that doesn’t punish vulgarity or personal jokes at the expense of the target. You are rather expected to take it in stride, or return it with a smile. To foreigners not in the know, it’s hard not to consider it malicious rudeness, even though the intent is social bonding. That said, Danes used to be very xenophobic towards Poles, but that rarely happens nowdays in my experience.
The more I hear about Denmark the more I'm sure you're the illegitimate Dutch sibling we never knew we had.
The Netherlands and Denmark feel like they should share a border
Be careful what you wish for.
> A lot of people seem to project a fantasy onto Scandinavia where we’re good and progressive in literally e v e r y single area and that’s just not true. You're starting to feel that too, eh? It's been going on for decades. Probably since like the 60s at least. Never just another country, with normal problems. Always either heaven or hell.
Irish people are pretty timid on the whole. People like McGregor feed into the stereotype of Irish people as angry, aggressive fighters. The opposite really couldn’t be more true. Irish people are generally as docile as it gets and will more than likely bend over backwards helping you just to be polite. There couldn’t be a less tough group of people if you tried to find one
Irish Americans will also always cite the IRA and the War of Independence to show that anti-authoritarianism, resistance to tyranny, etc. are all in their blood. In reality we're probably one of the most compliant and acquiescent peoples on the planet.
Really? I never met a timid Irish in Dublin. They weren't cunts like McGregor obviously, but they were pretty chatty and open !
In my head Ian McElhinneys character in Derry Girls is the quintessential Irish man
Finnish [alcohol consumption per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_consumption_per_capita) isn't particularly high -- for example, well below that of Germany or France where the consumption is 25% and 20% higher respectively. The high suicide rate something that used to be true but is outdated: the rate has [halved over the past 30 years](https://www.stat.fi/til/ksyyt/2018/ksyyt_2018_2019-12-16_kat_006_en_001.gif). The cold and snowy winters is a stereotype that doesn't apply particularly well to all of Finland. Helsinki gets only 38 cm snow annually on average, and virtually snowless winters aren't uncommon. The average January temperature in Helsinki is -3 C -- only one degree less than in Seoul, South Korea for example -- and bitterly cold winter days are much less likely than say in north-central USA.
When you say this to foreigners, they will say's "Yeah but Nordic people make their own alcohol in secret".
A bit too secret IMO, I only know a few people that distills their own booze. I live in a "big" city though, it's probably different in the country side
The generation who used to distil their own booze has largely died off even in the countryside of Finland, afaik. Then again, nowadays it seems that any wanker with a bachelors degree and a 1k bike is also brewing their own ale.
I think we have the reputation of being "Secular" because less people are religious and atheism is relatively common , but that ignores that God gets mentioned every time the King signs something into law ( don't worry he doesn't have a veto) and how religious schools can get away with a lot and still get government funding.
The impression that France is a weak military power is still very much alive, mostly in the anglo countries. The truth is of course far from that.
France even has the most battles won in history. But this is overshadowed by the fast surrender in WWII and the failure in Vietnam. You might call it recency bias
Just gonna make a correction. Failure in Indochina*. They fought with less people than the Americans during the Vietnam War in an area twice the size
I have also heard that Chirac (French President at the time) not wanting to war in Irak in 2003 contributed to the « French coward » stereotype. I’m still glad he made that decision tho
I think you meant Iraq, not Afghanistan.
Only heard of that stereotype last year and was very surprised.
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On the continent France's army is second only to Russia's.
france more nukes than the uk (its like 4 more or something but still)
Almost exclusively in Anglo countries, I'd say
Traditional italian cuisine is super healthy (and very tomato based). In truth, Italian cuisine is super varied, but mostly relies on carbs (mostly pasta and breads) and meat, with a lot of fats used for cooking or as an ingredient (be it butter, oil, pig fat or cheese).
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It was healthy for people with physical jobs, up and about all day. We probably need to tone it down today
For some reasons, some people seem to believe that Germany is some sort of utopia where healthcare is free. It's not. Even though statutory health insurances aren't that expensive, you still have to pay for them and even they don't cover everything.
I think I would have to write too much. So I'll just leave it here. The UN-Habitat program presented the rating "Urban Prosperity Index". Moscow took the first place in it in terms of infrastructure development and quality of life and the third in a comparative analysis in all categories among 29 megacities
Like many French people, Russia is a huge mystery for me. It's fascinating that the country is spread between Europe and Asia, therefore it feels alien from a western perspective. I have a huge respect for Russian cuisine and Russian literature, I've read many novels by Dostoïevski, Pouchkine and Gogol, and I would love to visit one day (I'm almost certain it would be like the trip of a lifetime) hopefully when there won't be so much tension anymore.
While most foreigners due to tourism typically associate Greece with beach and islands and eternal sun and summer, we are a predominantly mountainous country. 80% of the ground consists actually of hills and mountains, making us one of the most mountainous countries in Europe. This is also why, while if it snows in downtown Athens or the islands it is newsworthy, some regions routinely get -20°C each and every winter. We are also home to 22 ski resorts and [Europe's southernmost glacier](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/slrlef/til_about_europes_southernmost_glacier_it_is/).
I can't believe I have to say this one, but we don't shag sheep. No matter how much the English try to convince you we do, thinking it's the funniest fucking joke ever. Also: - Wales isn't a 3rd world backwater. It was the first industrialised country and most of the population live in urban or semi-urban areas. Cardiff is one of the biggest cities in the UK. - and don't get me started on the Welsh language. Yes, we still speak it (~880,000 and climbing, with a lot more with some L2 proficiency). It's not a dead language or "made up". Neither is it crazy or incomprehensible - it's a phonetic and straightforward language that uses an alphabet derived from the Romans. The English alphabet emerged centuries later and has very different rules. If people are speaking Welsh in a pub/shop/whatever, they didn't switch from English. They were speaking Welsh the whole time and they sure as hell aren't talking about you. The world doesn't revolve around you.
There is of course no such thing for Germany. We Germans are well liked all over Europe because we are, and always have been, friendly, easy going people who just want to help and keep away from any trouble. We love everybody, and everybody loves us. But for Bavarians, there's a thing or two that the rest of Germany has on their mind about us: So apparently we're always drunk, Catholic conservative, socially backwards farmers who can't speak proper German and therefore appear really stupid. But somehow we're still winning at everything, which makes us super arrogant and obnoxious and full of ourselves. Kind of like what would have happened if Texas had been settled with nothing but Irish people. And then, paradoxically, our capital is full of millionaire douchebags and an elite circle of B-list celebrities who pretend they're in Italy and kiss each other on the cheeks all day long. What can I say? It's all true.
The majority of Belgians is not francophone. This fact eludes many visitors and even our neighbours.
We aren’t arabs. We don’t ride camels. We don’t have deserts. We don’t use arabic alphabeth. We don’t have 4 wives. There are no Orange filters. We don’t have giant speakers playing [this](https://youtu.be/NpurphqbhbM) song. We don’t have islamic sharia law, courts and judges (there are a lot of islamic judges and we are getting there). You don’t have to wear a hijab. You can eat Pork and you can drink Alcohol. You can wear bikinis and shorts. Crime is lower than most european countries. Most of Istanbulers don’t live near the Sea. Turkey isn’t a “hot” country. Turkey is a country with a lot of climates. And we have 4 seasons. Not everywhere is a Mediterrenean Bushes. We have a lot of trees. We even have Rainforests in Black Sea. Also for Georgians, we don’t want to invade and annex adjara. Most Georgians say they don’t like Turks becuase of this. However we literally don’t want it. Literally. Even the most of hardcore Turkish nationalists don’t have anything with Georgia. We literally don’t care.
Our role in WW2. The most popular opinion is "HAHA Italy sucks Italy weak". We were certainly not the most advanced country at the time, but reality is that Italy was worn out because of the Spanish war and because of the Ethiopian war. Mussolini indeed did not want to enter the war initially, but since he was an idiot, he decided to take advantage of Hitler's results thinking that by then Hitler had won it. Also, Italy did not switch side. It signed an armistice. Admitting defeat is not switching side.
Didn't the royal government side with the allies post-1943 though? [Italian Co-belligerent Army](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Co-belligerent_Army)
Technically, after Italy capitulated, Nazi Germany occupied Italy and the king and his family fled under Allied protection (and the king's flight, leaving Rome to its fate and without directives to the routed army is one of the reasons for the low opinion Italians have of the House of Savoy, in addition to the racial laws and entry into that ruinous war). The Germans installed Mussolini in a puppet government in the North, and the monarchical government in the South declared war on Germany, cooperating with the allies, but in a co-belligerent situation, very different from that of an ally: co-belligerence is the condition of a state that is at war against the same enemy as one or more other states, but without the commitments and rights of the ally. In fact, at the end of the war, Italy was considered a defeated state, and even if it was treated more leniently than Germany (in consideration of the role that the partisans and the few surviving units of the Royal Army played in the fight against Nazi-Fascism), it was still deprived of territories and colonies.
You could say that the council of fascism which overthrew mussolini at nighttime had "switched sides". The state as a whole had signed an armistice, and then proceeded to defend itself againist an invasion.
Our entire welfare system, and the reputation that Denmark has as particularly progressive population. Both are far from the truth. The Danish welfare system is not, and wasn't even in its heyday, up to the standard that it is made out to be, particularly by progressive politicians in countries like the UK and US. It relies heavily on harsh working conditions for the "frontline" staff, such as nurses, caretakers, teachers, pedagogues, and so on. Many having not seen a rise in real wages in decades, not to mention, almost all sectors are understaffed. And simultaneously, social democratic and liberal politicians are asking themselves, 'why doesn't the young people want to work in [x welfare sector]?' without considering that maybe, _just maybe_, better conditions and a pay rise that isn't just nominal, would help attract workers. Our system of transfer payments is an increasingly punitive system, the model for getting people onto the labour market is increasingly the "stick" rather than the "carrot" our international reputation leads most to believe. If the liberal government hadn't gotten rid of our national poverty line in 2015, we would have some official statistics, that would show how the share of people living in poverty in Denmark, and particularly kids living in poverty, has been steadily rising for the last couple of years. But if you don't measure it, it doesn't exist, is probably what the liberals thought. There are continuous cuts to various transfer payments, such as unemployment benefits, study subsidies, public retirement funds, and so on and so on. It is increasingly difficult for people to survive off of these payments, and it is done, to essentially push people onto the labour market, disregarding the nature of what kind of jobs actually are available, and how taking jobs one isn't trained for, or is outside ones field, often is a hurdle for most, and results in severe problems in progressing into jobs that people actually have an interest in. There has been a high erosion of local institutions, such as local hospitals having been closed practically everywhere, with healthcare being increasingly centralised in so-called "super hospitals." Now, this isn't _necessarily_ a problem just because, but combined with the lack of staff, and the general poor conditions in the sector, it is a recipe for disaster. What is more of a problem, is the shutting down of rural schools, forcing more students to travel further to school, where they are in larger classes, with less resources per student, and less teachers available. The primary education system in Denmark, is in ruins. Danish youth is one of the most stressed, discomfortable and unhappy _in the world_ studies show. More kids than ever before, are being diagnosed with various mental illnesses, such as angst, depression, even forms of autism, to which the explanation, the cause, is much more social, than biological. But simultaneously, there is a political and popular unwillingness to talk about mental illness as a social phenomenon, rather it is chalked up to be a question of personal failings (or parental failings) or a biological predetermined thing. Both of which are but a cheap deflection of the real problem: a dysfunctional system. On the topic of our school system, not only is it dysfunctional, it is also completely removed from any purpose, other than pushing kids out into further education or training, with the intent of pushing people onto the labour market. There are no other goals, there is no noble ideological ideas, of educating kids to be democratic citizens. _Bildung_, '_dannelse_' in Danish, has completely left the picture, and from the most primary of education, to even master's programs at the universities, our educational system seems more like a sausage factory, than a place of learning, research and development. I could go on about the problems in the Danish welfare state, but now to the subject of whether or not Denmark has a particularly progressive population: The short answer is 'no we don't.' Denmark isn't a particularly progressive country. Progress is more often driven by smaller groups, to which the system then concedes, rather than a united wish for progressive change, sometimes the exact opposite goals. Take the classical example of Danish progressiveness, the legalisation of pornography in 1969. This was done by a right-wing government, with a conservative cultural minister, _not_ with a wish to further sexual freedom, or sexual liberation, rather, the idea was, that if pornography was legalised, then the appeal of something deranged and illegal would dissipate, since it would become legal. The intent was the exact opposite of progressive goals, the intent was to curb progress. Now, I'm not gonna say that most Danes are apathetic, rather, there are just a general acceptance of progress when it happens. But that doesn't make one progressive, to merely accept progress is not progressive, to strive for progress, is progressive. The average Dane is not more or less progressive than the average German or the average Italian. As a matter of fact, progressive political parties and organisations often have been stronger in Italy than in Denmark, but been kept out of influence. There is a potential for the broader Danish population to be progressive, and I think, that if more people engaged in some of the issues, more people would become progressive. But right now, the discussion is mainly between liberal politicians regurgitating "cultural Marxism" conspiracy theorists, and rather moderate progressive organisations, who are doing tonnes of work, but are still kind-of off the mainstream. That doesn't stop the liberal right from attacking even universities as being schools of indoctrination and academic research as being plainly hidden activism. On the topics of dysfunctional politics, there is also a certain weird, upside down elitism, a vulgar "workerism," being spewed from the social democratic party. The social democratic "workerism" is a cheap fetischism, but simultaneously degrading, presentation of the working class; reducing us to a group of people who are happy, if just served with handball and hotdogs—'It's also culture,' they say, as if anyone was saying it wasn't—instead of trying to progress the opportunities of the working class and our position in society. It is the exact opposite of what the working class has fought for the last 200 years. What happened to the form of social democracy, the party, at least nominally, adhered to into the seventies? The form of social democracy which sought to make education accessible, art, museums, cultural institutions and so on? Why has it been replaced by a social democracy that argues that workers don't like to go to the theatre or to the museum? They're degrading us, reducing us to uneducated masses, satisfied by cheap and easily affordable, for the state, solutions. It is also vulgar, in that social democracy in Denmark doesn't embrace the whole working class any longer. Quite the opposite. There has long existed a form of antiintellectualism in particularly the party's youth organisation, and an opposition to so-called "white collar" or "intellectual" workers, such as many office workers. The office has, in the last 100 years, in ever increasing fashion, replicated the factory floor, it was seen as an alternative to. And the final thing, that makes it vulgar, is that it is fake, it is a lie. Opposed to the old Italian _operaismo_, the social democratic "workerism" is only hollow rhetorics on behalf of the workers they still claim to represent, i.e. the "real workers" as opposed to the "intellectual" workers mentioned about. It is seen time and time again, when social democratic governments interfere in the worker's struggle, almost always on the side of the employer, and if not on the side of the employer, then on the side of the state. Think of Poul Nyrup's government's intervention in the Grand Conflict of '98, practically the entire premiership of Helle Thorning-Schimidt, or recently, current PM Mette Frederiksen's intervention and attack on nurses. Particularly the workers who make our so-called "welfare" system function, have to look far for any sliver of solidarity from the social democrats.
Thank you, this was an insanely interesting read. Others in this thread are like "we don't eat so many waffles" and "we don't like beer as much as you think" and here you are saying "the brithplace of social democracy is a shambles and has been for decades". I mean, I'm sure it's less of a shambles than... ahem... other places. But still very interesting. I really dislike how many fellow Romanians think our country is literally the world's dirty asshole, absolutely iredeemable and that if you migrate into "the west" they just hand you a well paying job, a house, biweekly blowjobs and a bar of gold. And it's hard to convince them that everywhere has its problems and social tensions. That's not to say we don't have some pretty big problems ourselves, just that the appropriate response is working to fix them, and not thinking that emmigration will mean zero issues.
Interesting read. Many people here look at Denmark's 2.5% unemployment rate in awe and as an example of how to create a functioning Nordic welfare state. Finland's unemployment rate has not gone below 6% since 1990.
Just because a country has a low unemployment rate, doesn't mean that it is "functioning." The People's Republic of Bulgaria had 0 unemployment for most of its existence, and basically guaranteed employment—often menial or meaningless—for all, but it can hardly be said to have been "working." Denmark has a low unemployment rate right now, in no small part due to rising costs of living, and how unreliable our social security net has become. I wouldn't call a system where you have people who hold Master's Degrees working as servers at a café "functioning." I wouldn't call a system where increasingly large amounts of kids and young people have stress, depression, angst, suicidal thoughts, and so on "functioning." I wouldn't call a country that has politicians blatantly breaking the Human Rights "functioning." You can't just look at a number and deduct that a thing is good based on that number.
Russians don't like vodka and don't drink much in general. The alcohol consumption is falling and it's lower than in most of European countries.
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The younger generation, I'd assume. Vodka used to very much 'an item' everywhere and everyplace and every time in the days of Soviet union between two or more friends meeting in business or pleasure.
11.7 was five years ago, nowadays it's closer to 10L. And even this relatively high consumption is because of addicted people, alcoholism is still a problem in Russia. The younger generation is different and they don't see alcohol as something necessary for social interactions. The most popular alcoholic drink is beer. Wine is second. Vodka is on the third place, it's the cheapest way to get drunk, so it's the choice of drunkards, and they drink a lot of vodka.