Vanagandr

The first sounds like a bastard mix of Dutch and Swedish, and I feel like I could understand the last two if I were a bit better at Icelandic This is hella cool

Iceland seems like it would have pretty decent weather for half the year (from October to April)

I think I only heard one song in German the entire time I was there actually. Most of it was American pop, rap, or rock, but the only exposure I got to what Germans listen to was whatever happened to be playing in bars or hostel lobbies, so that might not be an accurate representation. Anecdote time though, a Brazilian, a Mexican, a Canadian, and myself, whom we collectively dubbed "the four Americans", went on a pub crawl, hooked up with a German dude from our hostel, and found ourselves in a "secret bar", in what I think either used to be an underground parking garage or a bomb shelter or something (no emergency exits that I could see because fun is number one in Germany). It was sort of punk themed in that they had tons of stickers for whatever bands the patrons played in stuck on walls, and plastered on urinals, they played vaguely punk music like RatM and Rise Against, and everyone was dressed punkishly. At some point though, Linkin Park came on, and people started cheering, and this one guy I remember raised his beer with his index finger outstretched and head bowed, as if to say "this is my jam". I feel like German culture is American culture from ten years ago. Also there, is a "Lebowski Bar" in Dresden, in which they have the Big Lebowski playing at all times on multiple different screens.

I feel uncomfortable about discussing good metrics for mass shootings, but the only data in that link lists victims per capita as a representation of the frequency of mass shootings, which is unequivocally wrong. It does not address events per year or per capita, which could be actual metrics for frequency. If you take the mass shootings divided by the population, using numbers pulled from that chart, America comes out with .417 mass shootings per million people, which is much higher than any other country on the list, with Finland coming out to .4 per million people. It still doesn't address the number of events per year, instead saying that the events are all from the same time period (for all we know it's counting shootings from the early 1900s). The data is either terribly organized, or designed to mislead. America definitively does have more mass shootings, more frequently, than other nations. I probably wouldn't make so big of a deal about it, but just 11 days ago my younger brother was at a Target store where a gunman opened fire, so passions flare. In any case, this is a kind of morbid subject, when we could instead be talking about culture shock and anecdotes from abroad.

I've been to some places in the US where they have see-saw switches, but I think toggle switches are still the standard, at least in Iowa. The most jarring moment coming back to the US was when I saw a toggle switch, and for a moment I couldn't remember how to use it.

I had been meaning to start posting here for a while, but I never got around to it. I recently got back from Germany, and some trivial and not so trivial cultural differences that I found fascinating from my position as an American, so I figured I would share them, roughly in order of when I observed them. Some of these things are probably representative of Europe more generally, but I unfortunately did not get a chance to visit outside of Germany. So here are some interesting things I observed in Germany, from the perspective of an American. Germany has different light switches. Whereas the US has toggle switches, Germany has seesaw switches. The thought had never occurred to me that light switches might not be a universal constant throughout the world. People are much more liberal with their use of car horns. This might be a thing in the US too, but I live in a smaller town where horns are reserved for near-accidents and assholes. I was told that you could ask for tap water in most places, and they would serve it to you, at a price, and with distaste, but there was only one place I found that would actually serve me tap water (which they offered at no charge). The restaurant was flanked on both sides by hostels, so I assume they were catering to tourists who were used to free water. It's not easier to find free water outside of restaurants either. I found only one public fountain in my whole stay, and it was installed by the work of an individual philanthropist rather than the state. I've heard the historical reason for Germans' distaste for tap water is because the original water lines in Germany were not safe to drink from and cultural momentum keeps people from drinking tap water. I ended up buying a couple of half liter bottles of water, which I refilled from bathroom taps, which I was assured are perfectly safe now, throughout the trip. This was probably the most jarring thing for me. I don't drink soda, but I noticed that if people would order soda at a restaurant, the waiters would pop open a bottle of soda and pour that into a glass. Soda fountains are apparently not a thing in the rest of Europe either. This didn't come as a surprise to me, since I was already acquainted with German culture, but none of the war-related museums I went to glorified the Wehrmacht or the SS at all, and would go on to say that Germans in general were complicit with the crimes of Nazi Germany. Germany, as a whole, is very apologetic about WWII, and they do not make excuses for the actions of the Nazis. Wehraboos are so terrible at wanting to be German that they completely ignore Germany's actual stance on WWII. Graffiti is almost everywhere. As best as I can tell, people have an apathetic acceptance of it, and don't bother to clean it up. There was a lot of anti-fa graffiti on street lights and things, which I thought was pretty neat. The one slogan in particular that I liked was "the 8th of May; whoever doesn't celebrate it, lost." Older buildings are not treated with as much reverence as in America. There were cafes in almost every historical building, which I couldn't see happening in America. I assume that because there are a lot of older buildings relative to America, their attitude towards older buildings is different. German museums are also much less secured than American museums, apparently trusting to the people themselves to not ruin antiquities, or possibly having replicas on display. They had a lot of things behind glass still, but they had some historical artifacts sitting out, and the American in me was mentally screaming. If we wonder why people think Americans are paranoid, this might be a small reason why. German museums also tended to be more interactive than American museum, in my experience, especially where technology was concerned. In the German Museum in Munich (not really much to do with Germany specifically), which was a technology oriented museum, you could hop into the cockpit of a bunch of aircraft, turn the turbine of an ME-262 engine, mess with the collective of helicopter blades, watch steam engines work, among other things. I spoke with a lot of non-Americans, and talking about gun control always amused me. People are accustomed to the knowledge that Americans own guns, and they voice distaste for it, but for some reason the concept of going to a range and shooting for fun is incomprehensible. They'll get this expression of horror, and ask pointed questions as if they assume you're planning something. I'll tell them an anecdote about how one of my friends went into a gun store and came out the same day with a "civilian-model" AK-47 (for lack of better terminology that I know), and they just get this comical horrified look, as if they have no idea how Americans haven't already shot each other to death. I could never argue though that they didn't have a point when they would bring up that mass shootings are much more common in the US though. German cuisine is interesting too. I could not find many traditional German restaurants, but at any given time you were in spitting distance of at least two Italian restaurants. American fast food chains, specifically McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, KFC, and Pizza Hut, are also common in Germany, and generally taste better than their American equivalents (McDonald's is an exception), in my opinion at least. Any business that does not need to be open at all times (IE hotels, hostels, hospitals, and sometimes museums) is required to be closed on one day of the week. Most shopping centers and other business places are closed on Sundays, most restaurants choose either Monday or Tuesday to be closed. There's not many places that are open 24 hours of the day, and there's not really any places equivalent to American retail stores like Walmart or Target. I understand this isn't so uncommon in the rest of the world, but it was a little weird for me since I took it for granted that you could go a Walmart on any day that isn't Christmas and buy whatever you happen to need. Air conditioning is only a thing in office buildings or department stores generally. Houses and smaller buildings have neat windows that can open either side to side or from the top to let in air, and it doesn't usually become hot enough that it feels uncomfortable without air conditioning. The last few days I was in Germany it got up to 25 Celsius and I thought I was going to die. Bottle deposit in Germany is between 15 to 25 cents. In any metropolitan area you're likely to see people picking through trash cans for yesterday's bottles. Bottlecaps, cigarette butts, and sometimes glass pave the streets of Germany. I'll probably add to this later. Cultural phenomenon thread maybe?

I'm making a trip to Europe sometime this year. Very good timing for me.