Huge numbers of Japanese emigrated to Brazil and Argentina post-WW2. There is a gorgeous formal Japanese garden in Buenos Aires donated to the Argentines from the Japanese government as thanks for accepting so many Japanese immigrants.
Brazil also has the largest population of [Italians outside of Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italians).
And the largest [Lebanese population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_people), surpassing even Lebanon.
Bonus: [Second largest German population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans#Geographic_distribution) outside of Germany.
Yeah, we have a huge Japanese colony here, mostly in São Paulo.
However, I heard that Vancouver - Canada is the most Asian city* outside Asia. I've lived there and I can confirm, there is a lot of Asian people..
Edit: Apparently Vancouver isn't independent yet.
Because, as an older/ or pre-modern Orthodox Christian calendar they have an alternate calculation in determining the date of the Annunciation (when Mary was informed by the angel Gabriel she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus). This accounts for the 7-8 year gap between the Ethiopian and Gregorian Calendars.
In the 90's a friend of mine visited Cuba just to have an adventure. He was so surprised whenever he was driving and would stop at a stop sign or red light and total strangers would open the passenger doors and just jump in and go along for the ride. Everyone was so friendly and hospitable and the next thing he knew he was invited to meet every passenger's whole family and share meals with all of them. This happened quite often and he met more people in 2 weeks than he had after living in San Francisco for 2 years.
My sister just got home from a trip to Cuba, and she was also surprised by how genuinely friendly the locals were. She didn't drive, so I can't say anything about OP's friend's experience, but based on what my sister said, Cuba is definitely still that chill.
That's the way it should be imo. Teaching is such an important job and America's school system is really needing higher paid teachers/better funding. It's quite sad really.
I don't know why, but for some reason I used to think that kangaroos were an endangered species. Then a friend of mine spent a year studying in Australia, apparently they're actually fucking everywhere. And they're like deer in North America in the sense that they will suicidal jump in front of moving cars.
Sort of. The logo is a Kiwi in the roundel, just like Canada has a leaf. The RNZAF emblem is the Haast Eagle, which is the largest eagle known to have ever existed. They're extinct now tho, thank fuck, coz they ate Moa's - which were 12ft tall. So in short the emblem is a bird which was really dangerous but is now extinct. Just like our strike capability.
According to the constitution of Liberia only "persons who are negroes or of negro descent" can obtain citizenship. It used to say "people of color" but they changed that in 1955.
Even Americans hate American pickers. Here let's tell you this guy's life story about how he fought in world war 2 and when he came home his parents died in a tragic car accident and his wife died last year. Now we're going to rip him off the best we can for all this cool shit he has
In the US, in many states, there is no minimum legal drinking age if the parent (or even spouse in some cases) gives consent: ["underage drinking is allowed in 31 states with parental consent and 17 states with spousal consent, if the consenting spouse is over 21"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_by_youth_in_the_United_States#Legal_controversies)
same in Denmark. You have to be 16 or 18 to buy alcohol though, depending on how strong it is. It's pretty common here for people to start drinking a bit at 13-14.
I got to spend one Christmas in a little town in the Netherlands, and I had noticed that there were a number of manholes on the sidewalk, mostly on street corners. Come a day or so before Christmas, the manhole covers were removed to reveal plots of dirt where pine trees were planted and decorated.
Real, living Christmas trees on every street, it was magical and I miss it dearly.
Edit: Don't remember the exact town's name, but it was somewhere in the south near both Belgium and Germany. Maastricht, maybe?
What makes this more interesting is that there are barely any Guarani people left. Only 270,000, according to Wikipedia; yet 5-8 million speak the Guarani language.
During WW2, Switzerland was capable of mobilizing more than 900k soldiers within 24 hours.
To put this into perspective, we're talking of a country of 4 million at the time.
We were literally not worth the effort. No resources, pesky army and worth more as a trade and banking partner. Had Germany won WW2, we would have been annexed sooner or later, by force or other means.
A little late but still a good one IMO.
Japan's most common meal in Christmas Day is KFC. Apparently they believe that Americans have this tradition so they picked it up also. Except I've never heard of anyone here in the states actually do this... I even grew up in Kentucky.
They couldn't find turkey for the holiday meal, so chicken became the natural substitute, and KFC ran a really, really successful marketing campaign so it's a tradition now.
It's because of the Occupation. Poultry (usually turkey, sometimes goose) is the traditional American Christmas food, yeah? The best approximation available in Japan was fried chicken (karaage or some form thereof), and so when chain fast-food started, KFC had a perfect niche there: American-style Fried Chicken, the Traditional American Christmas Meal!
According to friends of mine who served in Japan, their Japanese friends were smug as *fuck* to be taking them to KFC for Christmas dinner. You need to make reservations like four to five months in advance because the KFCs are overrun at Christmas, so it's very much a point of honor to people there to be able to secure reservations, especially so if they're taking an American friend.
That you can buy coca (i.e., unprocessed cocaine) packaged as tea leaves in the public markets in Ecuador.
That, and most places you can't flush toilet paper.
I actually love coca. Especially coca tea, drinking it daily does wonders and drinking it consistently(as the tea addict i was) helped with handling the high altitudes in cusco while the rest of my family relied on pills.
It takes a lot of Coca to make Cocaine, it takes ~370 grams of of Coca to make a gram of Cocaine.
Coca is a natural stimulant, make people will chew it to get a small bit of energy, it's not great for your teeth, but otherwise pretty harmless.
Imagine it's like coffee, but they figured out if you grind, dry, cut and dilute out the Caffeine it would get you high.
*Edit, fixed the ratio of Coca to Cocaine.
Brazil wins the world record and it will be difficult to beat. They have 500 congressmen being investigate. All 6 last presidents are being investigated. Two were impeached and the current one is about to be arrested. Together, these 500 congressmen plus 100 times that number of mayors, governors, deputies, etc., have stolen, what some estimate to be the equivalent of 1 trillion dollars in the last 13 years. The investigation started 2 years ago when a judge decided to investigate a car wash company that was owned by someone that was laundering money.
The investigation was like a snowball, one guy, tied to 2 guys, tied to a politician, tied to 10 politicians,.... suddenly the investigation was spread into 45 countries that were used to clean the money.
That in Panama (at least where I was right outside Panama City), they burn the grass in the median of the highway. I thought that it was so odd. There would be 7'-10' flames just going at it and no one attending to it.
Well not even that. In China and other Asian countries I heard they don't have any helpful bystander or other laws.
So if you merely try to help someone they might turn around and try to sue *you*
Because I guess helping them admits fault? Quite disgusting when you think about it.
In Nepal, [Tenzing Norgay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzing_Norgay) is less popular and celebrated than [Edmund Hillary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary).
I always assumed they'd be proud of their local guy who made it big, probably the world's most famous Nepalese man. Thing is, though, Hillary started the Himalayan Trust and invested a huge amount of money in helping the Nepalese people build schools and hospitals, while Sherpa Tenzing fucked off to Switzerland to compete in international competitions and make a name for himself.
It used to be 3 cities, Buda and Óbuda on the West Bank of the Danube and Pest on the East, but they all merged into one city in 1873 and the whole thing has been called Budapest since then
That till the other day, gay marriage wasn't legal in Germany. Never could get my head around it, given that Berlin is like Mecca for gay European men.
My political science professor, a German, says he remembers the first time he heard the phrase "Hospital Bill."
He thought it was a joke. Why would a hospital ever send you a bill?
You can get billed by your hospital in Germany too. If you have private health insurance they bill you directly and you get reimbursed by your insurer.
That in Iceland it's common practice to leave your napping baby in a stroller outside of shops and restaurants no matter the weather. It's so enjoyable to have a meal without crying babies around.
It is. The older I get the more I realize how freeing it is to not have to worry about things like someone kidnapping your baby, the police shooting you, heck, ANYBODY shooting you, home invasion type robberies, etc. etc. Even stuff like your drinking water not being poisonous, it's pretty hard to become homeless, you won't die if you can't afford an operation, etc. Not having to worry about, or even think about these things is very nice. Feeling generally safe eases a lot of worries.
Men in India hold hands with each other. Young men, old men, teenagers, everyone. Frat boy types often walk down the street holding pinky fingers. On the metro, it's not uncommon to see them sitting arm in arm or even one friend in the other's lap.
I was lucky enough to hike in the Himalayas, and at night the sherpas would all sleep together in one room, a lot of them spooning. Once I even saw one guy sleeping face down with another guy face down directly on top of him. Around the fire, sherpas and Indian hikers alike would often sit leaned back in each other's arms.
Before visiting, I had told my travelling partner that I wasn't going to come out as gay to anyone there. When she arrived in Delhi and called me from the airport, the first thing she said was, "Why are you worried about being gay? I've already seen dozens of gay couples!"
Witnessing these things hammered in how powerful society and culture are. By the time any of us is old enough to think about what social norms are, they've been pressed into us well enough that they feel natural and unbendable.
Up until very recently Germany had strict opening and closing laws for stores, some closing ridiculously early.
That absolutely would not fly here in the U.S., our 24/7 culture would have a fit.
I suppose if that's what you grew up with you'd learn to deal with it, but I'm sure it was tough for if you ran out of milk late one night, and too bad, you'd have to wait until morning.
There is a Vietnamese minority of around 10k in Poland but there are no Vietnamese in polish cemetaries...
The polish police didn't notice that until around 2010...
If a Vietnamese person died there, organized crime would just take the passport and give it to another person from Vietnam cause for border control they all look the same. :))
Edited the number
Americans don't pull crackers at Christmas time.
That sentence has probably left a lot of Americans confused.
Edit: So it turns out that a lot of Americans do indeed have crackers at christmas. Serves me right for making a sweeping generalisation about a whole country!
That in Ethiopia, the year is currently 2009, their day starts at dawn (00.00) and they have 13 months in a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Calendar
Despite Christians comprising 0.3% - 0.5% of the national religious demographics in Bangladesh, Christmas is an official public holiday. This is a country which is 85-87% Muslim in South Asia.
I went to Cuba and Chile on mission trips and I was surprised how much the kids in Latin America like K-Pop and Japanese anime. Being a non spanish speaking half Korean myself, it turns out that singing some Big Bang and 2ne1 is an effective way to make friends.
That Australians basically do not fear all of their dangerous animals. They respect them (save the usual outliers of drunk college students, etc) but in the same way the average American would respect a train crossing, as deadly but unremarkable. Beach has 18' Great White sighting? Full again the next day. See a box jellyfish? Give it a little space. Large venomous snake attacks the ute? Honk and drive around.
The only animal my uncle actually warned me about was a large and visually unremarkable ant. I had a wheelbarrow full of them at the time, since I was moving around dirt in his garden, so I was not too thrilled. When I asked if they would kill me, he said, "Nah, but you'll wish you were dead."
It's not recently, but being from a country where Monday is the first day of the week, finding out that Sunday is the first day of the week in the U.S. (and a lot of other countries) weirded me out.
It still doesn't make much sense to me, since as far as I know, Sunday is also part of the weekend in the U.S., and the work week also starts on Monday in the U.S.
I'm a Brit, and like a lot of us, was really surprised that electric kettles aren't common in America.
I know they don't drink tea as much, although kettles are for a lot more than just tea (boiling water for cooking or cleaning are big uses), so I assumed they'd be common across at least the Western world. I view kettles roughly like microwaves, a handy appliance you'd just expect to be there.
Another big one about America was that taxes aren't included in prices. I'd never even heard of this until I went there and genuinely thought they were trying to scam me!
Well it is called a TV License, quite a lot of countries have some form of payment for TV services. It pays for the BBC which is ad-free. Plus presumably the infrastructure and the behind the scenes stuff to actually get TV transmissions out there.
In Japan, they set up speed traps, but do it strangely. Rather than having a patrol car pull you over, a policeman will wave down each offender and have them pull over into a designated area. The drivers exit their vehicles and sit at a large folding table and fill out a form. They do this meekly and quietly. No one screams about government tyranny or their own innocence. They just pull over, get out, fill out the paperwork, and leave. It's all very civilized and orderly.
This is about my country which is the USA. Before reddit, I never thought twice about the size and shape of public restroom stall doors. I never felt that I lacked privacy. But apparently, some foreigners feel like they're peeing in an open field.
In the UK we use a flavouring in our dentists' mouthwash that tastes like root beer, but less sweet and with a kind of unpleasant antiseptic undertaste. The first time you try root beer as a British person it's like someone's forcing you to drink mouthwash.
I was curious/bored so I kept trying it every few months for a while and now I can kind of see what Americans see in it, but it was a long journey.
In South Korea, they have a superstition that fans can cause people to die in the night by stealing the oxygen from the room (unopened with no windows). It's known as fan death. That's why most fans made in Korea will have functions to automatically turn of when people are sleeping.
The name Pakistan is actually an acronym denoting the different regions of the country, specifically Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Indus, Sind, and Baluchistan for the -tan ending.
Don't all the -stan countries have names coming from persian, with -stan meaning "Land of the"? For example: Kazakhstan= Land of the Kazakh
So shouldn't Pakistan have the same formula? Or is it the odd one, trying to fit in?
If you're an ethnic Malay in Malaysia you're forced to be a Muslim for life (it's marked on your ID card). This means (among other things) that it's illegal to drink alcohol and if you're caught having premarital sex you'll be forced to marry your partner (had a few close calls there hehe 😁).
In Moldova, beer is cheaper than water. Water in Moldova is dirty, and clean bottled water has to be imported. Brewing beer on the other hand is a popular industry, it helps with depression, which lots of Moldovans deal with.
Edit: grammar.
My husband attended a prestegious private high school, attended by the children of consulates and such. At the end of every school year, the student lot would be a quarter-full of supercars and expensive sports cars, because the cost of freighting the car to the Middle East and then paying the taxes on it would cost more than the cost of the car itself. So they'd just leave them there, and the school would wait until they were considered abandoned property, put a lien on them, and sell them off.
On Australian highways you have what can only be described as "drink- thru's" You pull up to the kiosk wind down your window and order your alcoholic beverage. I still can't quite work out how that's legal?
I've been to a drive thru daiquiri shop in Louisiana. They came in styrofoam fountain soda cups. I was told it's not an open container until you put the straw in it.
The highest portion of Japanese people living outside of Japan is in Brazil.
Huge numbers of Japanese emigrated to Brazil and Argentina post-WW2. There is a gorgeous formal Japanese garden in Buenos Aires donated to the Argentines from the Japanese government as thanks for accepting so many Japanese immigrants.
I was just there yesterday! Lovely way to spend an afternoon.
Brazil also has the largest population of [Italians outside of Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italians). And the largest [Lebanese population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_people), surpassing even Lebanon. Bonus: [Second largest German population](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germans#Geographic_distribution) outside of Germany.
It's almost like the whole Axis went there to live after WWII.
Yeah, we have a huge Japanese colony here, mostly in São Paulo. However, I heard that Vancouver - Canada is the most Asian city* outside Asia. I've lived there and I can confirm, there is a lot of Asian people.. Edit: Apparently Vancouver isn't independent yet.
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Ethiopia follows a calendar that is 7 years behind the rest of the world.
I got married this year in Thailand (I'm from the UK). My wedding certificate says I was married in 2560 rather than 2017.
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Because, as an older/ or pre-modern Orthodox Christian calendar they have an alternate calculation in determining the date of the Annunciation (when Mary was informed by the angel Gabriel she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus). This accounts for the 7-8 year gap between the Ethiopian and Gregorian Calendars.
Italy is the world's second largest producer of kiwi fruit.
Ireland is the biggest exporter of bananas in the world. They're not actually *grown* there, of course.
In the 90's a friend of mine visited Cuba just to have an adventure. He was so surprised whenever he was driving and would stop at a stop sign or red light and total strangers would open the passenger doors and just jump in and go along for the ride. Everyone was so friendly and hospitable and the next thing he knew he was invited to meet every passenger's whole family and share meals with all of them. This happened quite often and he met more people in 2 weeks than he had after living in San Francisco for 2 years.
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My sister just got home from a trip to Cuba, and she was also surprised by how genuinely friendly the locals were. She didn't drive, so I can't say anything about OP's friend's experience, but based on what my sister said, Cuba is definitely still that chill.
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That America doesn't have wild hedgehogs. Neither does Australia but I find that less surprising.
If Australia had wild hedgehogs, they would probably be aggressive and poisonous.
Or say "fuck it, I'm laying eggs."
Hedgehog != echidna One is blue, while the other is red.
Well, we do have echidnas. They're not the same, but they're sort of in the same ballpark.
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Homeschooling is illegal in Germany.
German teachers are better paid than teachers in most other countries too. They really have a strong focus on education there and rightly so I think
That's the way it should be imo. Teaching is such an important job and America's school system is really needing higher paid teachers/better funding. It's quite sad really.
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I don't know why, but for some reason I used to think that kangaroos were an endangered species. Then a friend of mine spent a year studying in Australia, apparently they're actually fucking everywhere. And they're like deer in North America in the sense that they will suicidal jump in front of moving cars.
We also eat them
The New Zealand Air Forces' emblem is a flightless bird.
Yes, but it can shoot lasers.
Sort of. The logo is a Kiwi in the roundel, just like Canada has a leaf. The RNZAF emblem is the Haast Eagle, which is the largest eagle known to have ever existed. They're extinct now tho, thank fuck, coz they ate Moa's - which were 12ft tall. So in short the emblem is a bird which was really dangerous but is now extinct. Just like our strike capability.
It's illegal to own only one Guinea Pig in Switzerland because Guinea Pigs are prone to loneliness.
What happens when one dies? You have to buy another in a never ending loop of Guinea Pigs?
That's when you "gift" it to a friend!
You give your friends dead guinea pigs? What an odd gift.
I like to think of it as mystery meat
In Taiwan garbage trucks play music. It was cool for the first three months...
I was pretty surprised to learn about those gigantic, god-awful hornets in Japan.
That explains Beedrill.
Have you seen them being cooked to death by smaller bees?
You mean when the bees swarm them so bad that they basically suffocate them? Yeah, that shit is crazy.
[Not so much suffocating them as cooking them alive...](http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/hornet-cooked-alive-bees/)
'And the secret of the honey bees dies with her...' *NAT GEO theme tune trumpets fucking ecstatically over that terrifying proclamation*
According to the constitution of Liberia only "persons who are negroes or of negro descent" can obtain citizenship. It used to say "people of color" but they changed that in 1955.
IIRC, Liberia was founded as a country for African-Americans to come to if they wanted to go back to Africa.
Liberia is an interesting country
I love its [county flags](https://m.imgur.com/r/pics/CNtgS)
My favorite one is the one with the hand holding the walmart parking lot post
Lol wtf
Literally today, I learned that the UK has a TV channel called Dave. And another one called Dave Ja Vu.
Well there has to be a channel to show all those Top Gear re-runs!
Dave ja vu is 1 hour behind for anyone who didn't pick that up. Great channel too!
And Dave is six years behind
And it's a decent channel too. Good variety but it's all re-runs... Except Taskmaster
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Even Americans hate American pickers. Here let's tell you this guy's life story about how he fought in world war 2 and when he came home his parents died in a tragic car accident and his wife died last year. Now we're going to rip him off the best we can for all this cool shit he has
There's no legal drinking age in Vietnam.
In the UK you have to be 18 to buy alcohol, I believe the legal drinking age is actually 5.
In the US, in many states, there is no minimum legal drinking age if the parent (or even spouse in some cases) gives consent: ["underage drinking is allowed in 31 states with parental consent and 17 states with spousal consent, if the consenting spouse is over 21"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_by_youth_in_the_United_States#Legal_controversies)
States are actually free to set whatever minimum drinking age they want, but if it's a number lower than 21, they won't get federal highway funding.
Wait, so you're telling me PA gets highway funding?!?!
And from what I've seen here regardless of your age it's nearly impossible to get alcohol due to it's laws.
Does this mean no one's allowed to drink alcohol, or everyone is allowed to drink alcohol?
everyone
same in Denmark. You have to be 16 or 18 to buy alcohol though, depending on how strong it is. It's pretty common here for people to start drinking a bit at 13-14.
Two showers a day isn't as popular around the world as it is in Brazil.
I got to spend one Christmas in a little town in the Netherlands, and I had noticed that there were a number of manholes on the sidewalk, mostly on street corners. Come a day or so before Christmas, the manhole covers were removed to reveal plots of dirt where pine trees were planted and decorated. Real, living Christmas trees on every street, it was magical and I miss it dearly. Edit: Don't remember the exact town's name, but it was somewhere in the south near both Belgium and Germany. Maastricht, maybe?
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In the 1700's we used wooden condoms. It's where the term "getting a woody" came from.
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What makes this more interesting is that there are barely any Guarani people left. Only 270,000, according to Wikipedia; yet 5-8 million speak the Guarani language.
During WW2, Switzerland was capable of mobilizing more than 900k soldiers within 24 hours. To put this into perspective, we're talking of a country of 4 million at the time.
"Let's not invade the alps" - Adolf
We were literally not worth the effort. No resources, pesky army and worth more as a trade and banking partner. Had Germany won WW2, we would have been annexed sooner or later, by force or other means.
"Eh, it still seems like a lot of effort for little gain" - Alternate future Adolf
Russia is really into tea. Like almost UK levels of tea consumption
Yup! Tea is integral to the culture and daily life. We drink almost as much tea a day as we do water.
There is no army in Costa Rica
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Great arc, though I wish the king had a tougher time dealing with his new reality.
Australia is 31 times bigger than the UK. But the U.K has a population around three times the size of Australia
Kazakhstan is ridiculously spread out too. Same with Mongolia.
The sheer amount of vacation (holiday) time our friends in Europe get. I was stunned to learn they get around a months worth!
A little late but still a good one IMO. Japan's most common meal in Christmas Day is KFC. Apparently they believe that Americans have this tradition so they picked it up also. Except I've never heard of anyone here in the states actually do this... I even grew up in Kentucky.
They couldn't find turkey for the holiday meal, so chicken became the natural substitute, and KFC ran a really, really successful marketing campaign so it's a tradition now.
It's because of the Occupation. Poultry (usually turkey, sometimes goose) is the traditional American Christmas food, yeah? The best approximation available in Japan was fried chicken (karaage or some form thereof), and so when chain fast-food started, KFC had a perfect niche there: American-style Fried Chicken, the Traditional American Christmas Meal! According to friends of mine who served in Japan, their Japanese friends were smug as *fuck* to be taking them to KFC for Christmas dinner. You need to make reservations like four to five months in advance because the KFCs are overrun at Christmas, so it's very much a point of honor to people there to be able to secure reservations, especially so if they're taking an American friend.
That you can buy coca (i.e., unprocessed cocaine) packaged as tea leaves in the public markets in Ecuador. That, and most places you can't flush toilet paper.
I actually love coca. Especially coca tea, drinking it daily does wonders and drinking it consistently(as the tea addict i was) helped with handling the high altitudes in cusco while the rest of my family relied on pills.
It takes a lot of Coca to make Cocaine, it takes ~370 grams of of Coca to make a gram of Cocaine. Coca is a natural stimulant, make people will chew it to get a small bit of energy, it's not great for your teeth, but otherwise pretty harmless. Imagine it's like coffee, but they figured out if you grind, dry, cut and dilute out the Caffeine it would get you high. *Edit, fixed the ratio of Coca to Cocaine.
Saudi-Arabia imports sand from Australia.
And camels
Landfills are banned in Sweden and the country mass imports trash from other European countries.
We burn it for fjärrvärme. Basically super heated water that heats up homes and businesses in populated areas. Some plants make some electricity too.
"We burn it for Fjärrvärme" is a very Norse turn of phrase thanks for bringing it to my life
The Czech Republic consumes the most beer per capita compared to any other country.
I went to Prague last autumn, a pint was 1€. No wonder they consume the most when beer is cheaper than water
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Liechtenstein is the world's largest producer of false teeth.
Well, someone had to be
In Bhutan, a lot of the buildings have penises on them for the purpose of protecting the building from bad spirits.
There was a guy in my school who worked hard to protect the school from bad spirits. I don't think he was from Bhutan though.
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Our national anthem still has a line where we say we've always obeyed the Spanish king. "Den koning van Hispanje heb ik altijd geëerd"
Is that three fucking "e"s in a row in that word.
France still has territories all over the world which are also members part of the European Union
Territories are weird because it means that Canada borders both France and Denmark.
That in Spain there are more corrupted politicians investigated by fraud than in the other EU countries altogether
Brazil wins the world record and it will be difficult to beat. They have 500 congressmen being investigate. All 6 last presidents are being investigated. Two were impeached and the current one is about to be arrested. Together, these 500 congressmen plus 100 times that number of mayors, governors, deputies, etc., have stolen, what some estimate to be the equivalent of 1 trillion dollars in the last 13 years. The investigation started 2 years ago when a judge decided to investigate a car wash company that was owned by someone that was laundering money. The investigation was like a snowball, one guy, tied to 2 guys, tied to a politician, tied to 10 politicians,.... suddenly the investigation was spread into 45 countries that were used to clean the money.
That's because Hungarians aren't investgated against.
Estonia has wifi all over the country
Women couldn't vote in Switzerland until the 60's or something
1971 (1991 in the last canton)
That in Panama (at least where I was right outside Panama City), they burn the grass in the median of the highway. I thought that it was so odd. There would be 7'-10' flames just going at it and no one attending to it.
The amount of people that try to run in front of other cars for insurance claims
Ah, the Russian dash cam side of YouTube.
Well not even that. In China and other Asian countries I heard they don't have any helpful bystander or other laws. So if you merely try to help someone they might turn around and try to sue *you* Because I guess helping them admits fault? Quite disgusting when you think about it.
That Easter is not a four-day weekend in the US.
People in the U.S. are lucky if they get Easter Day off from work. This is all assuming you work Sundays to begin with though.
In Nepal, [Tenzing Norgay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenzing_Norgay) is less popular and celebrated than [Edmund Hillary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Hillary). I always assumed they'd be proud of their local guy who made it big, probably the world's most famous Nepalese man. Thing is, though, Hillary started the Himalayan Trust and invested a huge amount of money in helping the Nepalese people build schools and hospitals, while Sherpa Tenzing fucked off to Switzerland to compete in international competitions and make a name for himself.
Budapest is actually two cities named Buda and Pest on 2 sides of a river.
It used to be 3 cities, Buda and Óbuda on the West Bank of the Danube and Pest on the East, but they all merged into one city in 1873 and the whole thing has been called Budapest since then
That till the other day, gay marriage wasn't legal in Germany. Never could get my head around it, given that Berlin is like Mecca for gay European men.
It just had another name (it was called eingetragene lebenspartnerschaft)and you couldnt adopt Children
> eingetragene lebenspartnerschaft Such an elegant language.
Read it as "lesbian partner craft" the first go through.
Czech Republic doesn't use Euros. Didn't realize this until I was in my hotel in the Czech Republic.
12 countries in the EU don't use euros
My political science professor, a German, says he remembers the first time he heard the phrase "Hospital Bill." He thought it was a joke. Why would a hospital ever send you a bill?
I know one instance where a hospital charged the patients for using those dispensable tissues.
Should have just wanked directly onto the floor
Then put one of these warning signs next to it
Hospital Bill is not a bad guy. He's just misunderstood.
You can get billed by your hospital in Germany too. If you have private health insurance they bill you directly and you get reimbursed by your insurer.
That in Iceland it's common practice to leave your napping baby in a stroller outside of shops and restaurants no matter the weather. It's so enjoyable to have a meal without crying babies around.
I wish I lived in a place where babies didn't get kidnapped. That sounds really peaceful.
It is. The older I get the more I realize how freeing it is to not have to worry about things like someone kidnapping your baby, the police shooting you, heck, ANYBODY shooting you, home invasion type robberies, etc. etc. Even stuff like your drinking water not being poisonous, it's pretty hard to become homeless, you won't die if you can't afford an operation, etc. Not having to worry about, or even think about these things is very nice. Feeling generally safe eases a lot of worries.
Men in India hold hands with each other. Young men, old men, teenagers, everyone. Frat boy types often walk down the street holding pinky fingers. On the metro, it's not uncommon to see them sitting arm in arm or even one friend in the other's lap. I was lucky enough to hike in the Himalayas, and at night the sherpas would all sleep together in one room, a lot of them spooning. Once I even saw one guy sleeping face down with another guy face down directly on top of him. Around the fire, sherpas and Indian hikers alike would often sit leaned back in each other's arms. Before visiting, I had told my travelling partner that I wasn't going to come out as gay to anyone there. When she arrived in Delhi and called me from the airport, the first thing she said was, "Why are you worried about being gay? I've already seen dozens of gay couples!" Witnessing these things hammered in how powerful society and culture are. By the time any of us is old enough to think about what social norms are, they've been pressed into us well enough that they feel natural and unbendable.
Up until very recently Germany had strict opening and closing laws for stores, some closing ridiculously early. That absolutely would not fly here in the U.S., our 24/7 culture would have a fit. I suppose if that's what you grew up with you'd learn to deal with it, but I'm sure it was tough for if you ran out of milk late one night, and too bad, you'd have to wait until morning.
I'm from New York where almost nothing closes. I went to Pennsylvania and I couldn't find a restaurant open past 9pm
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There is a Vietnamese minority of around 10k in Poland but there are no Vietnamese in polish cemetaries... The polish police didn't notice that until around 2010... If a Vietnamese person died there, organized crime would just take the passport and give it to another person from Vietnam cause for border control they all look the same. :)) Edited the number
So you were born in 1823, is that correct? Yes officer
People in the US are often circumcised
Americans don't pull crackers at Christmas time. That sentence has probably left a lot of Americans confused. Edit: So it turns out that a lot of Americans do indeed have crackers at christmas. Serves me right for making a sweeping generalisation about a whole country!
We do in Canada, though.
Culturally Canada seems close to the UK. Health service, national TV channel, parliament, join world wars on time, I bet you queue nicely too.
There was a 6 hour queue outside Parliament hill recently for Canada day, and it was nothing but politeness. So yeah, I'd say so
Honestly, the only reason I know about Christmas Crackers is through Runescape
I worked at a party store in NYC area, we sold them. Noone ever bought them, but we had them every christmas.
That in Ethiopia, the year is currently 2009, their day starts at dawn (00.00) and they have 13 months in a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia#Calendar
El Salvador is named after Jesus Christ.
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Then what does its capital San Salvador mean?
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Corpus Christi(Texas) is Body Of Christ in Latin.
Despite Christians comprising 0.3% - 0.5% of the national religious demographics in Bangladesh, Christmas is an official public holiday. This is a country which is 85-87% Muslim in South Asia.
I went to Cuba and Chile on mission trips and I was surprised how much the kids in Latin America like K-Pop and Japanese anime. Being a non spanish speaking half Korean myself, it turns out that singing some Big Bang and 2ne1 is an effective way to make friends.
That Australians basically do not fear all of their dangerous animals. They respect them (save the usual outliers of drunk college students, etc) but in the same way the average American would respect a train crossing, as deadly but unremarkable. Beach has 18' Great White sighting? Full again the next day. See a box jellyfish? Give it a little space. Large venomous snake attacks the ute? Honk and drive around. The only animal my uncle actually warned me about was a large and visually unremarkable ant. I had a wheelbarrow full of them at the time, since I was moving around dirt in his garden, so I was not too thrilled. When I asked if they would kill me, he said, "Nah, but you'll wish you were dead."
Rips are usually more dangerous to tourists. And sunburn. And don't go hiking in bumfuck nowhere without a shit tonne of water n a sat phone
It's not recently, but being from a country where Monday is the first day of the week, finding out that Sunday is the first day of the week in the U.S. (and a lot of other countries) weirded me out. It still doesn't make much sense to me, since as far as I know, Sunday is also part of the weekend in the U.S., and the work week also starts on Monday in the U.S.
I'm a Brit, and like a lot of us, was really surprised that electric kettles aren't common in America. I know they don't drink tea as much, although kettles are for a lot more than just tea (boiling water for cooking or cleaning are big uses), so I assumed they'd be common across at least the Western world. I view kettles roughly like microwaves, a handy appliance you'd just expect to be there. Another big one about America was that taxes aren't included in prices. I'd never even heard of this until I went there and genuinely thought they were trying to scam me!
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Well it is called a TV License, quite a lot of countries have some form of payment for TV services. It pays for the BBC which is ad-free. Plus presumably the infrastructure and the behind the scenes stuff to actually get TV transmissions out there.
women can't drive in saudi arabia edit: women aren't allowed to drive in saudi arabia
But they are allowed to be pilots.
In Japan, they set up speed traps, but do it strangely. Rather than having a patrol car pull you over, a policeman will wave down each offender and have them pull over into a designated area. The drivers exit their vehicles and sit at a large folding table and fill out a form. They do this meekly and quietly. No one screams about government tyranny or their own innocence. They just pull over, get out, fill out the paperwork, and leave. It's all very civilized and orderly.
When people get pulled over for speeding they scream about government tyranny? Dang, where are you from?
This is about my country which is the USA. Before reddit, I never thought twice about the size and shape of public restroom stall doors. I never felt that I lacked privacy. But apparently, some foreigners feel like they're peeing in an open field.
Everybody else hates Root Beer
In the UK we use a flavouring in our dentists' mouthwash that tastes like root beer, but less sweet and with a kind of unpleasant antiseptic undertaste. The first time you try root beer as a British person it's like someone's forcing you to drink mouthwash. I was curious/bored so I kept trying it every few months for a while and now I can kind of see what Americans see in it, but it was a long journey.
That in Europe the bathroom stalls have real doors. (Alright, it's a continent, so sue me!)
>So sue me I'd like your details please.
In South Korea, they have a superstition that fans can cause people to die in the night by stealing the oxygen from the room (unopened with no windows). It's known as fan death. That's why most fans made in Korea will have functions to automatically turn of when people are sleeping.
When people commit suicide, they say it's fan death.
It's a made up scapegoat to avoid public shame.
But everyone knows in Korea has figured that fan death means suicide, right?
Everyone except grandma. It's like my son and his "roommate".
I was surprised when my son's boyfriend came out as gay
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The name Pakistan is actually an acronym denoting the different regions of the country, specifically Punjab, Afghan, Kashmir, Indus, Sind, and Baluchistan for the -tan ending.
Don't all the -stan countries have names coming from persian, with -stan meaning "Land of the"? For example: Kazakhstan= Land of the Kazakh So shouldn't Pakistan have the same formula? Or is it the odd one, trying to fit in?
It has two meanings, "land of the pure" and as an acronym for the regions.
It kind of does, "Pak" also means "pure", but I wouldn't be surprised if that's why they chose it.
I was surprised that countries like Greece and Finland have compulsory military service
It's not so suprising when you consider that Finland has population of 5.5 million and 1,350km long border with Russia.
For the longest time I couldn't fathom Americans' fetish of wanking in socks.
If you're an ethnic Malay in Malaysia you're forced to be a Muslim for life (it's marked on your ID card). This means (among other things) that it's illegal to drink alcohol and if you're caught having premarital sex you'll be forced to marry your partner (had a few close calls there hehe 😁).
>If you're an ethnic Malay in Malaysia you're forced to be a Muslim for life That's so fucked
Ummm many Australians actually consider Kangaroos to be pests? That one got me
In Moldova, beer is cheaper than water. Water in Moldova is dirty, and clean bottled water has to be imported. Brewing beer on the other hand is a popular industry, it helps with depression, which lots of Moldovans deal with. Edit: grammar.
There is no bankruptcy protection in the UAE. Thousands of luxury cars are abandoned at parking lots in Dubai as their owners escape the country.
My husband attended a prestegious private high school, attended by the children of consulates and such. At the end of every school year, the student lot would be a quarter-full of supercars and expensive sports cars, because the cost of freighting the car to the Middle East and then paying the taxes on it would cost more than the cost of the car itself. So they'd just leave them there, and the school would wait until they were considered abandoned property, put a lien on them, and sell them off.
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On Australian highways you have what can only be described as "drink- thru's" You pull up to the kiosk wind down your window and order your alcoholic beverage. I still can't quite work out how that's legal?
There are some in the US. When they make you a mixed drink, they leave the paper on the straw, so it's a closed container.
Shit, didnt know drive thru bottleos are a Australian thing.
I've been to a drive thru daiquiri shop in Louisiana. They came in styrofoam fountain soda cups. I was told it's not an open container until you put the straw in it.