Questions you have about other nationalities!

[WatermelonWaveclub]

Just for fun. DD and I were just watching a video where Americans were asking questions about the UK. What are your questions (can be for any nationality from any nationality)? And please feel free to answer other people's questions!

I'll start with some questions for Americans:

Are your grocery bags really those ones without handles? They look really awkward to carry!

Why do you not have electric kettles?

In High school films the English teacher for example always gives them some homework to do by the next day and says 'see you tomorrow' - do you have the same classes every day? We just had English twice a week or something!

One for Americans: I’ve seen in a movie or 2 they were eating roast meat and veg, and bread. ? Also what’s the story with dinner rolls? Do they make from scratch and do they have with every dinner? I’m fascinated

‘großes Geschäft‘ does exist, but whether parents use it or not possibly depends on the circles you move in. I brought up my DC in Berlin with people who didn’t really want to sound twee, so I more commonly heard ‚pipi‘ and ‚kaka‘ (noting that pipi is a lot more socially acceptable than kaka). I think the nursery staff used the more formal ‚Geschäft‘ variations though.

We don't in Sweden. The lakes are treasured and mostly safe to swim in and you have to go out a long, long way before its deep enough to swim. My DS is 9 and has swimming lessons each week at school, all the way through school. This includes safety training. They also have lessons about their environment and how to care for it and pick up litter. Greta is very much a product of her culture.

Also our lakes are tested and monitored for water quality and safety. There's a website you can look up any lake and check all it's safety levels.

This is where we go. It's fairly typical to have jettys and slides.

This is for Swedish people. Snus? what's that all about? How come you're the only nation in Europe still to be taking snuff?

And Norwegians: why are you not allowed to neuter your dogs?

Nicer restaurants serve bread because it gives people something to eat while they wait for their main courses to come out. At home, we only have dinner rolls with holiday meals - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. I buy mine at a bakery. I don't know anyone who serves bread with dinner routinely.

Not a bad idea as people will be back at work and kids go back to school on Thursday 1st September. So most Parisians will be back home and everything will be open.

Fuck knows. Vile horrible shit that should have been banned a long time ago. It comes in little bags, like those silica bags you find in packaging, that gets tucked under the top lip. You can see when people are using them. I've been at hospital appointments and seen them being used by staff while working and it gives me rage. They wouldn't sit in my appointment and smoke a cigarette so why do I have to sit there and watch them sucking on that! ... and breathe ... (yes I'm triggered)

Thanks @LaDamaDeElche . I assume too that Spanish society tends to be very sociable and people don’t like to miss out? I had a lot of Spanish friends in the 90s ( I was in my 20s/ early 30s) and often struggled to keep up. I think a couple of them were deep down quieter in nature but didn’t want to be seen as antisocial so went along with the partying, outings, late meals etc. Just a feeling.

Spanish people are the same as English people, some are reserved and prefer to be at home or doing sports, some are crazy party people, some are a mix of the two. There is much more of a closeness between family here and people spend
Sunday at their parents having lunch or going out to eat etc. When the fiestas are on people do tend to be out late and party/socialise and be a bit crazier than normal.

Apart from in the big cities, I’d say people live a simpler life and do less. British children have so many after school activities, families/couples/singles are always out doing stuff and filling their weekends with activities. People seem to feel guilty if they spend a day at home not doing much. That’s pretty normal here. I think a lot of Spanish people, are happier to do a lot less, or just something simple like going for a stroll around the neighbourhood and chatting with friends. It’s like life was in the U.K. in the 80s a little bit in the smaller towns and villages here, especially outside of summer. Even in summer, many people are happy to be at their campo, with their family, their pets, chilling round the pool. Young people are like young people everywhere and like to party!

Spanish people are the same as English people, some are reserved and prefer to be at home or doing sports, sone are crazy party people, some are a mix of the two. There is much more of a closeness between family here and people spend
Sunday at their parents having lunch or going out to eat etc. When the fiestas are on people do tend to be out late and party/socialise and be a bit crazier than normal.

Thanks Ladama. I don’t want to be essentialising the Spanish, of course different people have different personalities and maybe as you get older you feel freer to just express your personality and not keep up with activities that don’t really make you happy. But the love of groups and social activities , not necessarily lubricated by large amounts of alcohol, always seems noticeable to me when I come to Spain ( I’m there now).

My American grandmother always served bread with dinner, but it was rye bread or pumpernickel on weeknights. That's not typically American though I'd say, she was first generation.

Most people I know only serve rolls on special occasions. Some southerners do serve biscuits or cornbread regularly, but those are much quicker than yeast rolls. I serve challah for Shabbat and holidays, but that would be true in a British Jewish household too.

Dane here.
Yes that is quite accurate.
And English is taught by first year of school and from 3rd grade.

My exMil (from the southern midwest) always served bread and butter with dinner. It was usually a sliced 'Italian' loaf. She is third or fourth generation American, depending on which side you count, and grew up in a very German and Italian city.

On special occasions she made Palmer House rolls.

Dane here.
We have 12 month of parental leave.

I'm going to guess that you can't tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese as in general the Japanese are much quieter and more reserved than the Chinese (speaking as someone who has lived in both countries). You'll even find signs on the trains in Japan telling people not to speak in loud voices or talk on their mobile phones. In general nobody really talks at all in the train. My friend and I once had a fairly quiet conversation in a lift and got shushed by an old lady, so even talking on a 5-floor elevator ride is not OK.

@Christinatherabbit

I live in a semi urban suburb of a major city with excellent public transport (three rail lines, numerous bus routes).

Kids in the local high school get driving lessons in the second year of high school. All the state paperwork related to driving permits and testing is done by the school. They also do the state mandated eye exam using the same equipment you find at the DMV.

Students are taught by PE teachers who are certified to teach driving. The school owns a fleet of driver's ed cars, and students head out to the local streets three to a car plus the teacher in the front passenger seat. They spend 40 minutes doing maneuvers, with the students taking turns driving. They do this a few days a week and on the other days they use the school driving simulator lab and sometimes watch movies featuring gory injuries resulting from lack of seatbelts, drag racing, texting while driving, drunk/high driving, and distracted driving.

There are sometimes too many students to accommodate in the driver's ed programme in any given semester, so failing the state written driving exam which is administered at the start of the semester bumps you out. So does not getting your birth cert to the school by the due date. Any cheekiness or disrespectful behaviour during the initial lecture on the programme will also result in forfeiting your spot. If they still have a surplus of students they eliminate students with birthdays falling late in the school year (July, August for spring semester kids, December, January for fall semester). These students will be accommodated in the next semester. Or they can do driver's ed in summer school.

You fail the entire course if you miss more than one in-car session. You also have to pass 90% of your in-car assessments, and all written assignments have to be handed in on time and passed or you fail.

Parents are supposed to do supervised driving practice outside of school hours. I have lived through supervising five DCs behind the wheel. It turned me into a jibbering wreck.

At the end of the semester the driver's ed teacher conducts a driving exam with his or her three students in each car. Testing includes various kinds of parking, changing lanes on a two lane highway, turning corners, getting out into traffic turning both left and right, making all the correct signals, reversing, observing traffic controls, driving on the motorway, using the on and off ramps, and more, pretty much everything you would do at a DMV facility.

Then in my state you have to keep a log of 50 hours of driving with a licensed driver and turn 16 before you go with your school-issued certificate and get your provisional license which will be turned into a full license at age 18 iirc though it could be 21.

You can be spot checked at the DMV too. They post three rrandomly picked numbers from 1 to 31 daily in the DMV facility, and if your birthday falls on one of those days you have to pass a road test before they give you your license. If you fail, you can go back again and try to pass. You don't need to take any extra lessons or get another permit.

Isn’t serving rolls with meals very common in the U.K.? They always come round with a basket of rolls at posh dinners, and we would always have them with “occasion” dinners at home, usually with the soup. Or sometimes just on the side. My Mum always set the table with side plates for our rolls or bread and butter.

However the thing that I found odd in the States was that they commonly serve crackers with soup! Is that a thing in American homes, or just a quirk of eating out.

Dane here.

Swedes : gets drunk as soon as they leave Sweden. Have laws about everything. Wish they were Danes 😂
Finns : quiet, loves the cold and sauna. Home brewery. Have a language that nobody else understands.
Norwegians: youngest country so they are kinda seen as the younger brother. Dont show off wealth.

But overall we are kinda similar and share lots of values.

"Do you ever feel a bit smug as you do pretty much everything better than every other country, in terms of policies"
I wouldn't say smug but having lived in other countries I highly appreciate our welfare system and policies.

@LuxembourglivinginDenmark I loved going to Copenhagen and it got so many things right... but a lot of it just wouldn't work in the UK. We're too... odd

@DownyEmerald - people don't really go nuts around lakes in summer. You see idiots with jet skis occasionally.

Lakes tend not to be accessible to anyone without a car, and the sort of lakes you can swim at are usually ringed by private lake houses. A group of teens would be ratted on by the people next door if they were trashing the shore or partying too wildly.

There are lakes and reservoirs with public access used primarily for fishing, but again, access is limited to those with cars. People tend to clean up after themselves if they have a picnic or family reunion in the area around a public lake. I've noticed special bins for dumping charcoal from a hibachi or BBQ grill.

The only time a group of teens would head off to a lake house on their own would be after prom, in my area.

Americans - why don't you use a knife and fork properly? Do you think British people are stuck up because we are more reserved? Do you think baseball caps are infantile?

I think that some Brits can come across as condescending and goady. Hope this helps.

Oops! That was a pretty big thing to leave out. Every time I have checked it though, it seems really expensive and probably not much of an option for the working poor.

I just checked again now- two people around age 50 with household income of $60K and the subsidized cost is $355/ month.

I used $60K as it's 2 people making $14+ an hour in full time jobs with just 2 weeks vacation. Insurance would be close to 15% of their annual wages.

Canadian here. Even we have no idea why there are such ridiculous gaps in public washroom doors. Every now and then someone will say that it’s to discourage drug use in the stalls, but that doesn’t really seem to hold water. The worst I ever saw was in Hawaii in Volcano National Park. The bottom gap was so high you could actually see the top of the toilet seat when you stood outside! I found another toilet block rather than use that one 😳

I’ve got a reserved Spanish DP, and his family are pretty similar, so I guess I see both sides 😁