I'd like to learn about other places!/What's the world like?

[2D8HP]

In reading this Forum, I'm impressed by how many people who contribute to this Forum are from all over the world.
Except for a week in Canada (so clean it felt like a film set) I have spent almost all my life within 20 miles of where I was born in Oakland, and with my family and work duties I'm unlikely to travel anywhere soon (maybe never), perhaps you have questions about other places as well

What's the world like?

[Ninja_Prawn]

Canada (so clean it felt like a film set)

You know that they do actually shoot a lot of Hollywood films in Vancouver and Toronto, because the Canadian government gives generous tax breaks to encourage it, right?

Anyway, I'll get us started with my homeland...
It's very different from most parts of America. Geographically, there is no wilderness here. Everything is towns, farms and little managed woodlands. If you pick a random direction and walk for an hour, it's almost guaranteed you'll pass a village or hamlet. My part of the world is also very flat and quite wet. A lot of it used to be marshland, before it was drained.

The weather is warm and humid in summer and cool and wet the rest of the time. We might get one or two days of snow a year, if we're lucky. This is the warmest and driest part of the UK, but it's still very lush with plant life, and not hot enough for things like malaria. Yet.

Economically, the entire region is dominated by London. A massive number of people commute in from the shires, mainly by train, to work in the offices of the city. Major industries are finance, insurance, property, law, and the services that support those things. The region is relatively wealthy, though there is some severe inequality.

The architecture (outside London) is dominated by red-brick buildings and tiled roofs, few places have anything above five storeys.

The people around here are generally aloof and unfriendly (including myself). The pace of life is fast, and there is little sense of community as far as I've seen. There are lots of unwritten rules to govern public behaviour, and tourists attract a lot of side-eye when they are ignorant of them.

The dominant accent (again, outside London) is Estuary English, though I personally don't speak it because my parents are Northerners, so I've ended up with a weird hybrid accent.
You know, it's going to be hard to compare these, because there's no objective benchmark that everyone can refer back to. Myself, I have spent a week in San Francisco, but I don't know it well enough to compare anything against it, and there's no guarantee that other posters have even been there...

[DataNinja]

You know that they do actually shoot a lot of Hollywood films in Vancouver and Toronto, because the Canadian government gives generous tax breaks to encourage it, right?

Heck, I mean, I've got the location for Professor Xavier's mansion like twenty minutes away from me. :smalltongue:

But as to about my home, Victoria? Well...

First and foremost, it's a tourist destination. So there's constantly a lot of hustle and bustle, though nowhere near the amount of any major metropolitan hub. Our main highway only has 3 lanes at the most. :smalltongue:

We have a core downtown, and a few large sub-urban communities, but beyond that, it's mostly rural. A fair bit of pastures and farmland. A lot of First Nations reserves. Buildings are a mix of the aging Edwardian-style buildings that give the city character, and more modern construction. We also have the country's oldest Chinatown.

The weather here never really dips below -5 degrees Celsius. I don't think it's snowed enough around the city to stick in the last 5 years. Yes, this is Canada. (Up-island gets more, though.) We do get a fair bit of rain, though - but no real storms.

Living here is expensive. The median house price is $450,000. According to studies, it's the 34th least-affordable housing market in the world. Good for vacations, bad for living.

People here are generally friendly, and accommodating, as we deal with tourists on a regular basis. However, we aren't good at proper driving behaviour...

[Ninja_Prawn]

Our main highway only has 3 lanes at the most. :smalltongue:

Ah yes, it's the same in the UK. The first time I went to America, I was shocked at how many lanes the roads have. Even in what would be considered large villages in the UK (e.g. Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where I spent a week in 2012 for some reason), there are like 5 lanes going each way through the middle of town.


Living here is expensive. The median house price is $450,000. According to studies, it's the 34th least-affordable housing market in the world. Good for vacations, bad for living.

That makes me sad. I am planning to emigrate - most likely to somewhere in Canada - in the next 6 months or so, and I do so love Victoria...

[Murk]

This is cool! Let's do a little bit of Netherlands.

It's a small country. You live in San Fransisco Bay? Well, the Netherlands, the entire country, is about twice as large as your one metropolitan area. There are quite a few people living here, though, and that's why everything is busy, cramped, and new. We can't afford to keep old stuff around (except for the tourist destinations, say, Amsterdam) because we have too little space already.

There's no mountains here. Our biggest "mountain", right at the border of the country, is about 500 meters. Most of this flat land is either buildings, or meadows. Those meadows are all swampy and moist, because most of them used to be on the bottom of the sea a few decades ago. Dutch people love making land out of sea.

Because everything is so flat, and so close by, there's bicycles everywhere. When I go abroad, or when people from abroad come here, the difference is always shocking. Going to the supermarket? Bicycle. Going to school or work? Bicycle. Pretty much every trip in a twenty kilometer radius is done on bike.

There's plenty of prejudices about Dutch people (about all countries, I guess), but when going abroad I always notice how straightforward we actually are. There's no flattery, no subtlety, no saying yes when you mean no and no elaborate rituals to show respect. People who come here either find that very honest and refreshing, or find it completely rude.

I guess there's only one stereotype that I should debunk here (all others are completely true), and that is that we're using drugs all day long. Funny enough, that's mostly tourists. I've been on exchange to other countries, and people from other countries use much, much more drugs than Dutch people. They are often shocked to hear that we from the Netherlands, where a lot of drugs are semi-legal, do not use it!

Anyway, it's a rather dull, unexciting country, but because of that it's very nice to live in. There's no troubles here.

[2D8HP]

You know, it's going to be hard to compare these, because there's no objective benchmark that everyone can refer back to. Myself, I have spent a week in San Francisco, but I don't know it well enough to compare anything against it, and there's no guarantee that other posters have even been there...
Living here is expensive. The median house price is $450,000. According to studies, it's the 34tandh least-affordable housing market in the world. Good for vacations, bad for living.

People here are generally friendly, and accommodating, as we deal with tourists on a regular basis. However, we aren't good at proper driving behaviour...

Um ok I guess I should tell more about where I live and work for comparison purposes (I hope I can give a good feel for it).
In and near San Francisco jobs are very plentiful, and by American standards pay very well, but housing is very expensive compared to most of the U.S.A. (probably cheaper than London I imagine).
The homes are typically "attached" in San Francisco, either "town houses" (two walls touch your neighbors houses), or apartments and Condo's that have neighbors above and below you as well. This is not typical of most of California farther away from San Francisco were single family homes on large lots predominate.
You would need to look a very long time to find any liveable properties in or near San Francisco that the $450,000 cited as expensive can buy. This wasn't true just five years ago, and most people who own property bought it years ago. In fact a lot of people sleep in motor vehicles and in the last couple of years tents have started to appear on sidewalks (spots under freeway overpasses have been filled with sleeping bags much longer). Some of those who sleep in the motor vehicles actually go to houses away from San Francisco during the weekend that they rent or own, I've worked with a number of guys who've done that.

The climate near the coast most of the year is between 50 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit (10 to 22 degrees Celsius), and it's only a few days out of the year that it will get below 35 degrees, or above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 to 27 degrees Celsius).
The further you travel inland the less true that is. Just 20 miles away above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) day and night for weeks in the summer, and months below freezing at night are common.
Also that same $450,000 that could maybe buy you a toxic wreck of a house in San Francisco or nearby, will buy you a palace inland, but you'll be likely be spending hundreds of dollars a month for electricity to power air conditioning many months of the year (a San Francisco and nearby home typically was built before air conditioning, and most likely still doesn't have it, most inlanders do have it).

San Francisco has many immigrants and it's common to hear many, many languages and accents (most of my coworkers were born either in the Philippines or the old Soviet Union, but they seldom talk about their birthplace)..
Less and less elderly stay in San Francisco
Also many relatively young, well educated adults without children, both American and foreign born, are replacing them, and despite a big increase in the number of adults living and working in San Francisco this last decade, the number of children has decreased, and some schools are being torn down and a lot of tall apartment buildings are going up, they are construction cranes all over.
Inland your likely to hear only two languages English and Spanish, and often the Spanish speakers have had family in California longer than the English speakers (before California was part of the U.S.A. it was briefly Mexico and before that it was part of the Spanish Empire, incredibly up the coast at Fort Ross was once a Russian Colony!).
A higher percentage of the population is either children or elderly outside of San Francisco than is the case in what we who grew up here call "The City" (yes they are other "cities", but only one "The City").

While the drivers here are often courteous at other times, from about 3PM to 7PM the streets are filled with a mad scramble of cars filled with people trying to leave their jobs and get back to their homes outside of SF. More and more pedestrians have been killed in recent years by motorists.
Interestingly since some of the freeways and bridges leading to and around San Francisco have lanes that are "carpool only", a form of hitchhiking has developed, and I have co-workers, who gather at certain pick up spots and get in the cars of strangers who our looking for enough riders to make the lane quota. Surprisingly this has been quite reliable, and the expected assaults and thefts of stranger upon strangers does not occur. Many thousands get to and from their jobs this way. While this "casual carpooling" (hitchhiking really) started by happenstance decades ago, there are now signs that City government has put up to control where people wait to be picked up. I have at least four co-workers who tell me that they spend 3 to 6 hours every work day getting to snd from work. My boss is not one of them because he drives in at 3AM and then sleeps in wish office for 3 to 4 hours, so dreamland.is his commute! Of our 17 man crew in building matinance (there hundreds more who work in the building, plus just over 800 who live in either the County Jail on the 7th floor or the Jail next door.
Of us only two live, work, grew up, and were born in San Francisco, three more were born in the U.S.A. but not San Francisco, two were born in the old Soviet Union, and live in San Francisco, the rest are foreign born and live from 2 to 80 miles away.
I'm sometimes considered almost a native San Franciscan because my brother was born in the City, and I work there, but I'm mostly considered a foreigner because I was born at a hospital 15 miles away in Oakland, and have lived most of my life there.
We have one Englishman on the crew and we used to have a Canadian born man who grew up in England. Both married Americans.
Where you live (in, near or far from San Francisco), and your work matters more than what Nation you were born in, and despite what's been in the news lately were very welcoming of immigrants (at least at my work).
I actually imagine that a San Franciscans life more resembles the life of a European than the life of a typical Californian only 20 miles away (in between is in between).
A San Franciscan spends the bulk of the earnings on housing, and quite a bit on restaurants, and there are money very good ones to choose from. A sandwich in San Francisco will usually cost twice what a similar meal elsewhere in California will.
Often a San Franciscan does not own a motorcar, and can get around be public transportation, my old boss who lived in the City referred to it as his BMW, that is "Bart, Muni, and Walking" (Subway, Bus and walking), most hospitals are within two miles, and you would have to try hard to walk an hour without finding a restaurant.
For someone who lives in "inland" California life is often quite different.
The rents are very much cheaper, but the wages are also lower, in contrast to the small apartments of "The City", inland there are miles and miles of big houses on big lots, separated by multi-lane highways and sometimes farmland. Instead of corner markets, inlanders typically drive many miles to "big box stores" that surrounded by giant parking lots, where usually items can be bought for much cheaper than in San Francisco, in fact sometimes San Franciscans will rent a car drive inland, load up on groceries etc. and even after paying for gasoline, and car rental will still considered themselves to have gotten a bargain.
For those in far inland "exurbia" drives of more than a hundred miles to see a physician are common.
Life in what are called "inner ring" suburbs is something in between. My doctor's office in Oakland is a seven mile drive for me. Two of my coworkers who live in San Francisco have a hospital a 30 minute walk away, a coworker who lives in the town of Fairfield tells me he travels 65 miles to visit his doctor.
So in general a San Franciscan spends their money on rent and restaurants, while a typical Californian will spend less on those, and more on gasoline, automobile matinance, and on electricity for air conditioning.
Surprisingly unless they live near a National Park, or Forest Service land a typical Californian will often need to travel farther to stand in a grove of trees than a San Franciscan or inner-ring suburb dweller. This is because while the inlanders may live closer to an apple orchard, those are in private hands, and unlike what I've read on Britain, there are no "ramble rights" in the U.S.A. San Francisco in contrast has the large and beautiful Golden Gate Park, and The Presidio, which is a former Army base now park, that is very forested, nearby Oakland was Tilden Regional Park, which is similar.
A co worker who lived in the Soviet Union, and Germany told me that unlike Europe, in California the cities just border each other for miles, without countryside in between. He said that in Europe there were big cities and than countryside, and not the "sprawl" of housing that he see's in California.
EDIT:
I just saw a television story on archaeological excavations in London, and while I know that London is a much larger city with a deeper history, from what the showed of it, London looks like a bigger, older San Francisco without hills!

Grey skies? - check
Near ship traffic? - check
Older buildings? - check
New giant skyscrapers? - check
Construction cranes? - check

I haven't seen anywhere else in California that has all these features, but when I visited the older parts of San Diego, even with San Diego's blue skies, detached housing, and no construction cranes, there was definitely a resemblance.

I haven't seen anywhere near as much building construction outside of San Francisco, and SF itself did not have anywhere near this much building during my lifetime before ten years ago.

Is that true of London as well? Or is most of the U.K. building, and has been for some time?

What's the situation were you live, around the world, and in the rest of the U.S.A. as well?

[thorgrim29]

Huh interesting question. Out of curiosity why don't you travel more? Travelling is fun, and if you plan it right it's not even all that expansive. Hell now would be a good time for you to go to Canada since our dollar is so weak at the moment. Then again I barely know my own country outside of the province so...

Anyway, I'm going to start with Quebec as a whole (well, the relatively populated parts at least) then my actual town.

So Quebec is one of Canada's provinces, the only one where the official language is French (I think New Brunswick has French and English and there are a lot of francophones in Ontario too). So, most people speak French as their first language, but you can more or less get along with english unless you're in deep rural areas in Beauce or Saguenay. Outside of the Montreal and Quebec city areas the population density is fairly low compared to what you're used to , the landscape is mostly forests and mountains broken up by fields and lakes. It used to be very agricultural (long story, the Church used to pretty much run the place and their way to protect the good righteous french catholic culture from the evil english protestants was to tell people to have huge families and work the land) so there are still a ton of small, mostly slowly dying villages all over the place, and if you're anywhere near the St-Lawrence a lot of places date back to before the Conquest of New-France by the brits (where a lot of your founders cut their teeth fighting against guerilla colonist and natives). The ones that have some touristic significance are pretty lively though, there are a ton of lakes and ski mountains and golf courses and national parks here so a lot of places are pivoting to tourism to survive.

Culturally I'd say we don't really fit the polite canadian stereotype, as a rule Quebecois are argumentative and confrontational, informal and a bit boisterous. It probably has to do with the fact that we're a tiny minority who took control of our lives back only 3 or 4 generations ago (used to be French was a synonym for poor and uneducated) but I like to say it's because we descend from the complaining-est people in Paris and the north of France. Society is a lot less stratified than in the US and a crapton less than in the Old World (not sure about other provinces). Sure there are poor people and rich people but since even private schools are fairly cheap everybody who's not super rich tends to rub shoulders together growing up (for example my parents are pretty wealthy and I went to a private high school but a lot of my friends were lower middle-class or thereabouts, same goes for college). Outside of Montreal it's also a very white place, and most people (myself included) can trace their line back to French colonists or american Loyalist or both). Since there is preference given to french-speaking immigrants they tend to be from the former French empire (North Africa and Haiti are the most common sources, also France of course since the job market here is much better for young people than in France). Montreal is a whole other story though, I'd say English is used almost as much as french (depends where you are in the city obviously, some parts are historically english) and it's a lot more diverse. People are generally unconcerned about what goes on in the rest of Canada (known as the RoC). Oh and the power comes from hydroelectricity, from small hydro plants in a few cities and few dozen massive dams in the north of the province run by a government-owned company, so you see a lot less gas heating as in some other places.


Now my area (though I'm moving to montreal soon.... so my home town then). The Eastern Townships borders Vermont and was mostly settled by the aforementioned american Loyalists after the revolutionary war (well, there were algonquin people here before but they didn't register land ownership so at the time they didn't ). So a lot of the place names are in english, and there is still a scattering of anglophone communities all over the place though the main cities are pretty much french now. It's in the tail end of the Appalachians so it's very hilly, a few mountains, a lot of lakes, many rivers. The area used to depend a lot on timber and textile but not so much anymore. The main city is Sherbrooke with roughly 200 000 inhabitants though with 2 universities and 3 trade schools (more or less, not gonna explain our educational system here) that number is about 20% higher from september to june. Most people live in bungalows, but condo buildings have been getting a lot more popular in the last 5 or so years. I think the highest buildings are hotels with about a dozen floors at the most, a few office buildings in the same range. So even though there are not a ton of people it's very spread out. We have 2 rivers with hydroelectric dams, and one of the retention lakes is has a large park, a public market near it, a trail, etc... the works

[Maryring]

The world is a fantastically beautiful place, and Norway is among the most beautiful of all places. :smalltongue:

No, seriously. I've travelled a lot across Europe, but ultimately I'm very much a mountain person. So the sight of Norway's tall peaks with fjords that dive straight into the ocean is incredibly soothing for me. I also love the fact that no matter what city you are in, you're less than 30 minutes away from wilderness of some sort. Mountain trails, rivers, parks, forests. It is not a very urban country, and the only place that I've seen with a three lane highway is in the area around Oslo, the capital.

Myself, I'm from Bergen which is the second largest city. It's on the west coast and is surrounded by mountains on all sides. Our weather consists of rain, some more rain, occasionally rain, and rarely cloudy with a chance of rain. But remember how I said you'd always be less than 30 minutes away from wilderness? In Bergen, you don't even have to drive. No matter where you live, you're a 30 minute walk away from a fantastic mountain hike. Or a forest trail. Or the ocean. So if you can power through the rain, or have the patience to wait for something as rare as a sunny sunday, you'll have a lot of beautiful nature to explore.

When it comes to the people, we are really... shy. It's not that we're trying to be rude, but people don't really talk to strangers. Thus we end up quiet and somewhat evasive of other people. I've found though that it's a lot easier to talk to people once we're way out in the wilderness. There's just something about walking in the mountains that turns us all chatty I suppose.

[veti]

Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand, although not the capital.

Geographically, it's towards the northern end of the country, and the climate is almost subtropical. Sub-subtropical, if you like. Right now it's winter, which means the temperature sometimes drops as low as 5 degrees (Celsius) at night, but seldom below 13 during the day, and there's a lot of rain. (For variety, there's also occasional thunderstorms and tornadoes, but those are relatively rare.) In summer (which is long), the temperature seldom drops much below 20. Unfortunately the humidity is generally quite high as well.

Culturally: rather than rant, let me tell you a little story that I think illustrates a lot about the country. In 1840, a shipping agent asked a newly arrived immigrant carpenter, one Samuel Parnell, to build him a new store. Parnell agreed, on condition that he would only work eight hours a day. ("We have twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleeping, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves. I am ready to start to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all.") The agent didn't like it, but since there weren't that many carpenters around, he had to accept it. From then on, Parnell made it his business to meet new shiploads of immigrants arriving, and tell them all about the eight-hour day rule. Within a year, it had become a widely recognised and approved rule.

My point in this story is not that we're an idle lot (although we're certainly less 'driven' than some places - a rich person in NZ is expected to sit back and take it easy, not drive on to build some huge multinational empire), but rather that anyone can do anything. Parnell had absolutely no authority to introduce that rule. He never founded a union or stood for election, he had no training in labour relations or workplace organisation or anything else remotely relevant - he was just a carpenter. But he did it anyway. Of course things are not quite so simple nowadays, but this "just do it" spirit is still strong. (It helps that the country is so small. Seriously, it's surprising how much difference that makes. It means everyone is kinda amateurish, which is often frustrating - but the flip side is that the barriers to entry for most jobs are really low.)

New Zealand is very isolated - which is to say, the world and its troubles seem a long way away from here. The news is dominated by sport - literally, at least half of every news bulletin is given over to sport, no matter what else is going on. New Zealanders think that children can have no higher calling or aspiration than to be a sports star. We're proud of those who make it big internationally (think Peter Jackson, Lorde, Helen Clark), but to be honest most people think of any of these careers as poor runners-up compared with being an All-Black or a Silver Fern.

The scenery is famously beautiful. For me it's not so much the set-pieces (mountains, lakes, fjords), although to be sure they're there and they're lovely - but then, every country has beautiful scenery if you're prepared to travel for hours to see it, that's no trick at all. Besides, it's a mite over-exposed now thanks to all those movies. Rather, it's the scenery that you'll just see by driving from place to place within the country.

[Ninja_Prawn]

although we're certainly less 'driven' than some places - a rich person in NZ is expected to sit back and take it easy, not drive on to build some huge multinational empire
...
The news is dominated by sport

I spend the last 6 months working alongside a New Zealander, and he had no lack of drive - which is saying something when it's in comparison to the furious productivity we're used to in London. He did love his sports though... he was checking the rugby news as often as I am on GitP!

[Madbox]

I am another 'murican, but live quite a ways away from the coast. I currently reside in a large town/small city called Fort Dodge, in Iowa.

It's large enough to have a single cab company and a few buses, but that's about it. Traffic is nothing like where I used to live, near Williamsburg, Virginia. There's a lot of crappy jobs like fast food or the grocery store, and a handful of decent industrial jobs, and that's about it. Well, other than farming corn and soybeans. Apparently the meat packing industry used to be good around here, but those jobs moved away in the 80s and the place never recovered. One nice thing about the horrid local economy is that cost of living is low. I've seen houses for sale for $40,000. Oh, and there's bars! A shocking number, considering the population.

Climate-wise, we have dry summers with temperatures in the mid-80s to the 90s (Fahrenheit). Winters are frequently around 10, with subzero windchill. I am glad that I like cold weather!

As far as the land goes, in town it looks like what would pass as a suburb in a more densely populated area, other than a few blocks that constitute downtown. Out of town, it's all farmland. Gently rolling hills is the name of the game for topography. Lots of roadside wildflowers. When they bloom the whole highway smells amazing.

[TechnOkami]

WELL HERE IN CALIFORNIA, WE-

Oh... you're from here.

Never mind then. :smalltongue:

[Feytalist]

I guess since I'm the only South African (possibly the only African) who regularly posts here, I guess it's up to me to provide a bit of an overview of my country.

It won't be easy; we're a famously diverse nation. We call ourselves the Rainbow Nation (a phrase coined by then-Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, one of the country's great souls) and with good reason. Eleven official languages, and about 50 more minor dialects. About 6 major cultures, that I can think of offhand. Anything I say about one might not necessarily be true for the other. In general, though, we've managed to integrate with each other to a fair extent. Basically everyone can speak at least two languages, some more, and we borrow from each other's culture a fair bit; whether it's food, language, customs or traditions, we're all a little bit intermingled. We're by no means a perfect melting pot, but then... who is.

And not just diverse racially, either. SA is a large country, and we've got a variety of geographical regions and climates to match. From hot, dry semi-desert in the north, to luscious thunderstorm-prone veldt (prairie/plains) in the northeast, to the (very humid) thickly forested subtropical southeast running to thinned-out savannah to the north, to the mild, sunny, and very fertile Mediterranean-climate region in the southwest. A series of mountain ranges divides the country more-or-less in half North to South, and the view from (and of) some of those mountain ranges are astoundingly beautiful. Above all, SA has amazing and varied natural beauty.

Oh, and wildlife preserves. We have a bunch of those.

But a bit more about where I'm from. I'm from (and currently live) in the southwestern tip of the country, just outside Cape Town (our Mother City). In fact, I'm looking out over Table Mountain and the entire Table Bay out of my window at this moment. It's quite a sight. (Table Mountain is one of the so-called "New Seven Wonders of Nature".) Summers are hot and sunny. Winters are rainy, but fairly mild. Overall, it's a sea, surf and wine type of vibe down here (it ain't called a Mediterranean climate region for nothing!). And speaking of wine, we're smack bang in the middle of wine country. The town I was born and raised in (in the same general region) is literally surrounded by vineyards - and, also literally, surrounded by mountains (I was actually raised on a wine farm). The whole area, in fact, consists of towns nestled in valleys between mountains, surrounded by wine farms. To me, there's nothing quite as beautiful as looking out over the countryside and looking at a sea of vibrant green from the vineyards. Ever see photographs of Southern France or the Napa Valley? Yeah. That's how I grew up. One nice side effect of this is, even so close to a fairly busy port city such as Cape Town, you're never that far from the countryside. Drive about 10km in any direction you choose, and you'll find yourself on a wine farm (and we frequently do...) or in one of the many nature reserves here for a hike or a picnic, or on a great beach to sunbathe, surf or swim (though rarely all three at once).

I'll give a quick overview of Johannesburg (Egoli, "Place of Gold"), the other major city in the country, all the way up in the northeastern midland. It's an industrial city, surrounded by mines (gold - hence the name, platinum, tin, manganese mostly. Uranium, too). The landscape is much less idyllic, there. A friend of mine likens it to Mordor (mounds of scree, smokestacks filling the air with noxious vapours, the wailing of the damned) to Cape Town's Shire (bucolic, rolling green hills, filled with hairy-footed hippies) - although, in reality, it's just busier, bigger and more industrious.

But what about the people? Walk down the street, and you'll probably hear three or four languages being spoken in any one place. You'll probably be ignored by the vast majority of the people. We're not an unfriendly country, but we certainly don't go out of our way to be hospitable. In fact, we generally don't go out of our way for anything, here. My dad has a saying he's fond of: "in Africa, nothing's so important that it can't wait two weeks". It's meant as a joke, but, well. You might remember the phrase "TIA - This Is Africa"? Yeah. People come, people go. Bad things happen, bad things pass. You shrug, you go on with your day. This Is Africa. It might sound defeatist, but it's really just the realisation that the world does not revolve around you, and is not arranged for you. It's certainly not a ubiquitous sentiment, but to a greater or lesser extent it's part of the fabric of life over here. In short, don't expect miracles from the people of SA. But, well, we can certainly show you a good time - whether it's the nightlife, the countryside or the culture.

I should mention something about the crime. Yeah, South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. And yeah, bad things do happen here. But, quite frankly, it all depends on where you go, what you do, and how careless you are. I've never been mugged, hijacked, burgled or assaulted in my entire life. Neither have the vast majority of visitors to the country. There's no gang wars in the streets. There's no police in riot gear patrolling the city centre. You might get accosted by beggars or scammers, but they only very rarely pose a physical threat. However, if you go out alone, at night, in a deserted street, there's a high chance you'll get mugged. I daresay it's the same most cities in the world.

Oh, and since I'm on a roll; SA has it's share of problems. Corruption in government; that's a good one. Nepotism, fraud, "misplacement" of funds - all a daily occurrence. ("TIA", remember?) Our infrastructure is mostly sound, but scheduled power cuts (charmingly called "load shedding") are depressingly common. Internet is... serviceable, but slow. Cell coverage is widespread and fairly stable. The cities and more populated towns are usually well-maintained, but the more rural areas are often more lacking in amenities and maintenance. Poverty is widespread - most every city, town and village has its sibling squatter camp (so-called "informal housing"). Unemployment hovers around 25%.

Even with all that, though, our economy is still pretty sound (possible looming junk status notwithstanding...). SA has loads of natural resources, and not just minerals and diamonds. Produce that would be expensive or scarce in other countries is easily obtainable, cheap and more often fresh than not. I'll give an example: SA's south coast is a fisherman's paradise. (The west coast too, come to think of it.) Abalone apparently goes for about USD100 per kilogram and is a delicacy wherever it's available; at my parents' beach house, I can wade knee-deep into the ocean, turn over a couple of rocks and find the day's catch in under an hour.

So yeah. South Africa. I wouldn't trade it for anywhere in the world. Come visit. See the countryside. Eat great food. Just keep your wits about you, and dial your operating speed down to about 0.5. Oh, and you might even be allowed to play with a lion cub or three.

[Ninja_Prawn]

charmingly called "load shedding"

As an electrical engineer, I can confirm that that is the correct technical term. The UK is very close to regular, scheduled load shedding as well; we've had to shut down a lot of old coal and nuclear plants for safety reasons, and no one built any new capacity in the last 20 years. It's quite a mess.

[2D8HP]

QUOTE=Feytalist;21062858]charmingly called "load shedding"[/QUOTE]
As an electrical engineer, I can confirm that that is the correct technical term. The UK is very close to regular, scheduled load shedding as well; we've had to shut down a lot of old coal and nuclear plants for safety reasons, and no one built any new capacity in the last 20 years. It's quite a mess.
We had what we called "rolling blackouts" in California in the early 2000's as well, but they turned out to not have been due to lack of capacity California electricity crises (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_electricity_crisis)
I've got to say these posts are awesome!

Canada!

Iowa!

The Netherlands!

New Zealand!

Norway!

South Africa!
and
The United Kingdom!

Thank you!
:smile:

[DataNinja]

Canada!

Well, you've got the west (west, west, very west) coast overview. At the very least, you're going to want to get another twelve opinions before you can say you've got Canada. :smalltongue:

Because, I can say, having been on a road trip across the southern strip of Canada, that there's sure a lot of differences wherever you go. Same with any country, really, but mine just happens to be big and empty (that's what 'Canada' means, right?), so it's a lot more obvious in the transitions (especially when entering Quebec). :smallbiggrin:

[thorgrim29]

Well, you've got the west (west, west, very west) coast overview. At the very least, you're going to want to get another twelve opinions before you can say you've got Canada. :smalltongue:

Because, I can say, having been on a road trip across the southern strip of Canada, that there's sure a lot of differences wherever you go. Same with any country, really, but mine just happens to be big and empty (that's what 'Canada' means, right?), so it's a lot more obvious in the transitions (especially when entering Quebec). :smallbiggrin:

Hey he got the east too (well, the french part of the east). And I am informed by my high school history lessons that Canada means village in Iroquois, and Quebec means "place where the river narrows" in Algonquin. Also Toronto means "Place where the tree's roots dip in the water" in Mohawk (which I just leaned to be fair)

[DataNinja]

And I am informed by my high school history lessons that Canada means village in Iroquois, and Quebec means "place where the river narrows" in Algonquin. Also Toronto means "Place where the tree's roots dip in the water" in Mohawk (which I just leaned to be fair)

I know, but none of those are as funny. :smallwink:

[thorgrim29]

Well, yeah I agree. Just didn't want the misinformation to spread.:smallsmile:

[shawnhcorey]

Hey he got the east too (well, the french part of the east). And I am informed by my high school history lessons that Canada means village in Iroquois, and Quebec means "place where the river narrows" in Algonquin. Also Toronto means "Place where the tree's roots dip in the water" in Mohawk (which I just leaned to be fair)

A lot of names in Canada are from the First Nations. :smallsmile:

[danzibr]

This is a highly interesting thread.

Me, I'm not very well traveled. At all. I'm an American. Lived in Wisconsin until I was 10, Missouri until I was 29. I'm 29. Went to Germany once for a week, visited Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. And uhh, that's it. Man >.>

Anyway. I live in rural MO. Very rural. The great city of Smithton has a population of 500. We have a mill for dog food, a diner, and a school. Not even a gas station. Population is ~98% white (just a guess), but we do have a strong minority of Russians, interestingly enough. Runner up would be Mexicans (and in fact, the nearest city has a pretty strong Mexican population).

For weather, it gets humid and hot. Heat index of well over 100 F/38 C in the summer (and sometimes, that's the actual temperature, not even heat index). We get a crap ton of rain in March-May, then it trails off. Some winters are mild, others can be biting cold. 3 years ago, school was canceled for over a week straight because we just kept getting more and more snow. Also, it doesn't stay spring for long. Like, it's kind of chilly, then we have only a week or 2 of nice weather, then it gets really freaking hot. Also, the weather can vary radically from day to day. One day, wear shorts outside. Next week, light snow.

Economically, there aren't many affluent people around here. A few, to be certain, but our school district has a great deal of students which get free or reduced lunch.

A lot of people around here are quite racist (at least from what I've observed... might be a vocal minority). Good ol' boys, so to speak. But they do have the famous country hospitality. People hunt, fish. The younger generation is more into games.

The school is the center of the community. Tons of people come out to watch games (volleyball, soccer, basketball, no football though).

Crime is pretty much non-existent. There's a website where you can check crime rates, where I used to live it was really high, thefts and whatnot. But I checked here and there wasn't a single crime for the past several years. Not a one.

Overall, it's a nice place!

[veti]

I spend the last 6 months working alongside a New Zealander, and he had no lack of drive - which is saying something when it's in comparison to the furious productivity we're used to in London.

Well, that might go some way to explain why he's - not to put too fine a point on it - not here...

[factotum]

Well, that might go some way to explain why he's - not to put too fine a point on it - not here...

From the sounds of it, you'd really like to leave New Zealand yourself? Odd that so many people *outside* the place would happily move there just for the scenery! :smallwink:

[Ninja_Prawn]

From the sounds of it, you'd really like to leave New Zealand yourself? Odd that so many people *outside* the place would happily move there just for the scenery! :smallwink:

Man, I would love to move to NZ. The number of NZ folks coming to the UK for work, however, suggests it may not be a wise move at this stage.

[Topus]

I can give you another insight about Europe.
I'm from North Italy, i live in Verona, yes the city of Romeo and Juliet. In fact, we nowadays owe something to Shakespeare, since a lot of tourist incoming is related to Romeo and Juliet stuff: "marry in the city of love!", "buy these heartshaped souvenirs!", "visit juliet's tombs!", "see the famous capulets' balcony!", "touch Juliet's statue breast!" an so on :D
Anyway, Verona is a very beautiful town, situated in the meander of the river Adige, houses a lot of historical buildings, the most relevant being the Arena, a roman amphitheatre from 1st century A.D.
The Arena, is still in use for pop-rock concerts, operas and theatrical performances. Other important buildings are related to the Scaligeri, a family that ruled in Verona, from 1262 to 1387 as a Signoria. Their tombs, named Arche Scaligere are a quite exquisite example of italian gothic. You can also see a lot of towers and palaces from medieval times. As in every italian city there are a lot of churches, i mean A LOT. The most important is the Basilica di San Zeno, a masterpiece of romanesque architecture. There is another roman theatre, still in use, we like to recycle old buildings ;D
Verona is a very nice city, of about 250.000 inhabitants, the weather is quite enjoyable because of its position, near the mountains. It's often in the middle, doesn't rain too much, not much wind, not too much heat, and so on, almost boring. You can walk around the city, reaching almost every point of interest by foot. It's quite crowded with tourists so you can often hear a lot of different languages and see large groups of people hearding around and enjoying their time. I like to see people from the world, around my city.
Verona is also quite industrialized, known to be in one of the wealthiest part of Italy, the north-east. The recent economic crisis striked hard, so also in the North economy is choking, but we are making our way out of it.
People from Verona is known as half mad, as reported even from Hester Thrale Lynch in her diary about her journey to Italy.
Something funny: in the summer when the opera season begins, you can see a lot of scenic props allocated in the square in front of the Arena, here are 2 pictures about the medieval knights in "Il Trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi.
http://i.imgur.com/NEljzwA.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/10cCsQl.jpg

[Gnomvid]

Sweden has a lot to offer for the connoisseur of scenery and picturesqueness, the most southern part is rather flat and is mostly farmland, a bit north starts the Forests and just about all along all the border with Norway there are mountains, there's lots of rivers of which only the two most northern the Kalix and Torne rivers are not used for hydroelectrics, the Torne river being the border to Finland for a large part of the border, both sporting lots of salmon and other popular sports fishing fish, thus being havens for sports fishing.
Here and there over the country you can also find rocks carved by stone age people, and obviously also rocks and stones covered with runes left by our more recent ancestors the Vikings.
I come from a village about 1 hour (by road) below the arctic circle so during summer it's never dark although we don't actually see the sun it's just never darker then dusk, although during winter the days are pretty short (although not as short as above the arctic circle).
A fun fact if you go to Haparanda (45 minutes east of where I'm from) on new years eve you get two fireworks shows, one from Tornio on the Finnish side at 23:00 in Sweden and then again at midnight in Haparanda.
Sweden has a pretty low population for a country the size of California, currently about 9.593 million although the majority of the past the 9 million line are new Swedes over the last 10 years due to various conflicts around the globe, in the north we are more welcome of the new Swedes then in the southern parts of Sweden, so every time I'm back in Sweden (as I currently reside in Greenock Scotland) there's a lot more none natives in the small town of Kalix where mum and my brothers live, bot not only new Swedes from places of conflict but also a surprising amount of Thai people, mostly youngish women married to middle aged or older men hmm.... but also their immediate family members, this is good because in a town where there used to be two hotels, two burger/hotdog places, one pizzeria, one regular restaurant, two Chinese restaurants and one café when I was growing up, there are now (hotels have not changed) five pizza places (thank you Balkans for the best pizza I have ever tried) currently three but was at one point five burger/hotdog places, two Thai restaurants three café's, two Chinese Restaurants and a lot more life then there ever used to be in the town which has a total population in the entire Kalix Municipality of about 16,230 as of March this year on a land area of 1,807.67 km2 (697.95 sq mi).
New builds are very common in Sweden especially since all the new Swedes and young people needs a place to call home, contrary to Scotland and most of the UK, there are few buildings from pre 1900, unless they are mansions and villa's and houses, as then they can date from the 1700's or even 1600's and they are all built out of wood. Here in Scotland the majority of buildings are from the 19th century and listed which means no alterations are allowed on the outside and few allowed on the inside as it would breakup the look of the street if one facade was different than the rest (a good example is London, where the areas that was razed during the blitz, were after the war rebuilt in a modern way but made to look identical to the rest of the neighborhood), and they are all made of stone, which is rather surprising as stone is a very poor insulator and insulation in it self seems to be almost unheard of on this isle, and most (far from all) building's now have these newfangled double glazing windows, which are not very good at insulating either whereas in Sweden triple glazing has been standard since the early 70s and quadruple glazing is pretty common, now you can even get quintuple glazing.
So in Sweden heating costs are not bad in Winter and it's easy to keep it cooler inside then outside in the summer whereas in Scotland it can be plenty expensive to keep warn in winter,(thank goodness it rarely goes below freezing in Scotland) and if it's good weather in the summer a fan is very useful.
Also some differences even In downtown Stockholm you can drink the water from the river flowing through the city (or at least you could up until the 90s), whereas in comparison the UK looks like it could use a good thorough clean all over.

[Ninja_Prawn]

even In downtown Stockholm you can drink the water from the river flowing through the city (or at least you could up until the 90s), whereas in comparison the UK looks like it could use a good thorough clean all over.

Yeah... please don't drink from the Thames. Or touch it with any part of your body. Sometimes it's not a good idea to even look at it...

In fairness, most UK waterways are now clean enough to sustain their natural wildlife (after two decades of cleaning effort), but they'll never be safe for human consumption.

[veti]

Man, I would love to move to NZ. The number of NZ folks coming to the UK for work, however, suggests it may not be a wise move at this stage.

I will say, it's a hospitable country. (Auckland is the only airport I know where they give you free coffee while you're waiting for your baggage. Real coffee, that is, not just vending-machine trash.) And although I'm not a NZ citizen, as a resident I have almost all the rights of one - including the right to live, work, come and go as often and as long as I please, vote, stand for parliament, serve on juries...

Factotum is right: I would like to leave. After more than ten years, I still get crazy homesick on a regular basis. But it's getting less likely by the year: my spouse and children and inlaws are here, and my ties to the UK get slightly weaker every year I stay.

I would say that scenery is a good reason to visit New Zealand, but a poor reason to live here. Consider that you're most likely going to be spending most of your life at work, and it's unlikely that your work is going to involve looking at much of the scenery, or even living very close to it.

[Xapi]

I'm from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Born, raised, still here at age 32.

Buenos Aires is a very cosmopolitan city, you'll find people roaming the streets at basically any hour of the night on weekends, , there's a bunch of museums (we even have a museums night, where all museums stay open untill 3 or 4 AM), you can find places to eat any type of food you can think of, and you can find places to conduct any legal activity you feel like (mostly).

The people:

This country had a huge influx of European immigrants, specially between WWI and WWII, and it shows: you can find all sorts of european ethniticies on the streets, and many keep large part of their culture even today (for instance, my half siblings are part greek, and they attended Orthodox Greek church when young and kept many of their grandparents traditions even today).

You can also tell that the european and their descendants trampled all aboriginal tribes, and that after the revolution, the country abolished slavery early on, and proceeded to send all black people in the front lines of wars, because there are almost no black people or aboriginal people in the city, except for new immigration from the last 30 years. The contrast is stark with Uruguay, a country set apart from us by a river (I admit it is a wide one), where black people are a sizable minority.

I think people in Argentina are mostly affable, specially to tourists. Sometimes we think we're more clever than most, so some people might try to swindle you, but I find that to be in the minority. In Buenos Aires you're very likely to find someone able to talk to you in english rather well, and willing to help out. We like to party, be with our friends, pretty much like anyone I guess but we make a habit not to let go of our friendships and make time to share an asado. Which brings me to...

The food

Sometime around the late 18 hundreds, it was decided that we'd be a country focused on producing agricultural goods for export, and import all our industrialized needs from England. This was widely considered to be a great move for the people who where there to take over the lands, specially those that funded the military incursions that trampled the aforementioned aboriginals.

If you are sensitive to carnivorous diets, you should stop reading here, jump to "the economy".

This is important to knowing the place because the upside of the agricultural-bent economy is that we have lots of cows. And we like to eat them in a pagan ritual we call "asado".

An "asado" is to a barbaque as a 3.5 wizard is to a commoner: Better in every conceivable way. There is almost no part of the cow we wont eat (The heart and lungs, I think, are usually fed to dogs), and we have made an art of making every single one of them delicious. If you are ever in Argentina, ask for a Molleja, then ask the asador what part of the cow it is. He probably won't know: It's the parotid gland. Incredibly good.

The economy

The other consequence of the agricultural economy is a big inequality between the haves and the have nots. Of course there has been in the last century a lot of back and forth, and we have some advantages over other countries in the region (such as free basic healthcare, mandatory insurance through unions, free education), but in general, you will see a lot of villas around, and in some cases, homeless people, people making a living from going through trash for recyclables, etc.

The landscapes

Buenos Aires is a metropolis, there's not a lot of nature going around. The country however, has great places to go if you're interested in sightseeing: the southernmost city in the world (Ushuaia), the glaciers in Santa Cruz, the whales in Puerto Madryn, several ski centers in the Andes, canyons, also in the Andes, the "altiplano" region in the northwest, and the waterfalls in Misiones.

We pride ourselves on having "all the weathers", although we lack a bit on true deserts (we have one, but not REALLY desertic), it's mostly true, I guess not much different from the different climates in the US but in a smaller surface (about 30% roughly).

[Ninja_Prawn]

Uruguay... where black people are a sizable minority.

To be fair, if I moved to Uruguay, I'd be a sizable minority. And I'm like 5 foot 3!

[Asmodean_]

Sydney:
Draw a line on the building-density axis from Manhattan to innercity London to middle American suburbs. Double the length of the line in the direction of "sparse" and at the end of that line is the Sydney suburbs. Having also lived in Kent, I can confirm it's actually much more similar to the UK than most of us Australians would like to admit :smallwink: but just consistently hotter. But it's never humid unless you venture north into Queensland or NT, so 30C in Kent feels like 40C in Sydney did. The city centre is worth visiting in about two or so years time, when they finish making all the improvements. But honestly, you'll forget you're not in any other English-speaking country very quickly, barring the weather and accents. And you'll get pretty fit pretty easily (especially if playing Pokemon Go) since places are just farther apart - you walk more.

N.B. We're not all Crocodile-Dundee-style in our accents, that only becomes noticeable the farther away from Sydney-Canberra-Melbourne you go. For reference, the "there is no spoon" kid from the Matrix has a pretty strong Sydney accent.

Canberra:
It's a giant park, into which someone has sparingly scattered some houses, a national library, the government. Even better for Pokemon Go players. If you extend that line from Manhattan to London to Sydney even further, you get Canberra. Any further down and you get a farmstead.

A little bit of history behind Canberra: Sydney was the capital of Australia. Then it was Melbourne. Then it was Sydney again. It kept going back and forth in a competition between the two and neither would back down. So in 1908 the government (currently in Melbourne) decided in typical Australian fashion to just build the capital between the two and thus Canberra was born.

If you want to sound like a native, this is how you say the names of the cities:
Sydney: Sid-nee (obviously)
Melbourne: NOT Mel-born Mel-bun (or Mel-bin if you're from QLD)
Canberra: Can-bra (or even Cam-bra sometimes)
Brisbane: NOT Bris-bayn, Bris-bun (or Bris-bin if you're from QLD)
Perth: Perth
Adelaide: Adder-laid
Darwin: Dah-win
Hobart: Hoe-baht.

[Xapi]

To be fair, if I moved to Uruguay, I'd be a sizable minority. And I'm like 5 foot 3!

Lol. Don't be like that, the little province is a proper country, by most definitions! :P

[Prince Zahn]

I'm gonna try to say what I can about where I'm from, hopefully it might interest some enough to have a look.

Israel is a beautiful country in the Middle East, East of the Mediterranean, although several other Bodies of water can be found like the dead Sea, and the sea of Galilee.

Tel Aviv-Yafo very much feels like a miniature New York City (to me, at least), with plenty of places to go, shops, busy people passing in the streets, but you have to get the rhythm of it, because people there vary from eccentric to not giving a darn. Same goes for traffic. Nightlife is also rich here if you know where to find it.

Our capital Jerusalem has many tourism sites for people who are come to explore places of historical, spiritual, or political importance, as well as secenery. Also, many of the country's national events take place here, and the most prestigious University in Israel is in Jerusalem.
Like most places in Israel, Jerusalem honors the sabbath, which takes place from Friday evening to Saturday evening. During this time no busses or shops are running. Be sure to read up a little on local customs in places like Jerusalem, Benei Barak, and similar places, before visiting there.

The languages most common here are Hebrew, English and Arabic, but some people might also know some Russian, French, Spanish, or other tongues depending on their roots.

In the settlements... Well, I've never been there, myself, but I've been told good things about it. Nice scenery, good atmosphere from locals, who really don't get enough company, no fault of their own. There's no shortage of prejudices about the place, but they aren't strictly true, and people who haven't been there don't typically see the full picture.

In suburban areas, the community is very no-nonsense, usually going about their business and keeping to themselves. There are lots of things that keep people at a distance from each other: smoking vs. Non smoking, ethnicity (between Israelis and Arabs, and between Israelis and other Israelis, we're divided into several separate sub-cultures), different veins of beliefs and traditions, music... Though exceptions do exist where people put these differences aside. There are places to socialize, but we don't always like starting conversations with strangers. There are places to socialize and meet new people, but it's rare you'll meet a new friend on the street.

In Israel, there's a lot more awareness in recent years on the importance of healthy eating and regular exercise. You can see people jogging or cycling in the street (I'm not counting electric bicycles but those are popular, too!) It's usually not too hard to find whole wheat, kosher, gluten free, vegetarian or even vegan options for people who eat in a particular way. We also have a lot of good foods it's worth looking into.

Things to know though before moving here is that we are not without problems too, though, like national and international security,the cost of living is high, good jobs are hard to come by, we don't have enough doctors, the elderly aren't being taken care of enough in the long term, among other things. The country is still young, though, and with a little luck it'll only get better from here :smallsmile:

[GolemsVoice]

What a cool thread, let me tell you something about Germany, my homeland:

Germany is, climatically as well as geographically, a pretty middle-of-the-way country. We have winters with snows (or used to have, at least) and summer with up to 30° Celsius, but very little extreme weather aside from the occasional strong storm and of course floods. There are a lot of rivers, meadows, fields, hills, mountains and stuff like that, often littered with castles and villages, especially in the south. The more to the north you go, the more flat the land gets, obviously, see also: The Netherlands.

What most people don't know about Germany is that it's a really diverse, or maybe even divided country, probably much like the US. Just like an inhabitant of New York City and of some Midwestern town will have very different experiences in life, so too is Germany split not only into 16 official states, but also in different historical regions (often former Duchies, Kingdoms, and whatnot), and also, famously, into east and west Germany. Westerners (stereotypically) think less of Easterners, Bavarians think less of the rest of Germany (the feeling is mutual), people from Oberfranken (a region) don't like the rest of Bavaria, people from one part of Oberfranken don't like the other part, one village doesn't like the neighbouring village (because just look at them, ugh). Some hyperbole for comedic effect, of course, but you get the idea. Germany is also divided economically, with poorer and richer states. As a rule of thumb, the south and the parts of old West Germany are the richer states.

Germany in general is a relatively clean country, both cities and nature. Most rivers are safe to swim in (though not neccessarily recommended) and there are plenty of lakes and national parks for those who love hiking and the out-of-doors. On the other hand, cities like Munich, Berlin, or Frankfurt have a vibrant art and music scene, and there's always something going on. One thing to keep in mind is that most German towns are small. 100.000 inhabitants is already considered quite big, and Berlin, our capital, barely has more than 3 million inhabitants, it's not even the biggest city around. My wife is from Russia, and she regularly comments on how in Russia, towns with 100.000 inhabitants are barely worth showing on the map, little more than villages.

If there's anything you want to know, just ask.

[Ulthraun]

I live close to a old riverside colonial town called, "Rabbit Hash". This was a popular tourist site for motorcycles and people from a far, but sadly, the main attraction (A old general store) had burnt down. So many childhood memories were made there for me. :(

[Ninja_Prawn]

Westerners (stereotypically) think less of Easterners, Bavarians think less of the rest of Germany (the feeling is mutual), people from Oberfranken (a region) don't like the rest of Bavaria, people from one part of Oberfranken don't like the other part, one village doesn't like the neighbouring village (because just look at them, ugh).

This is surely the same everywhere in the world.

People will always pick fights with their neighbours, until united by an outside threat. You spend your life rubbing up against the people next door, accumulating petty grievances, but most people feel more sympathy for them than some far-off 'other'. And the further you go, the more other people become. Sure, Bavarians might talk funny, but at least they're still speaking German. Etc., etc.

[Murk]

This is surely the same everywhere in the world.

People will always pick fights with their neighbours, until united by an outside threat. You spend your life rubbing up against the people next door, accumulating petty grievances, but most people feel more sympathy for them than some far-off 'other'. And the further you go, the more other people become. Sure, Bavarians might talk funny, but at least they're still speaking German. Etc., etc.

You're probably right, but there's different levels of this behaviour.
In my country, there's barely anyone who really identifies with his/her region. Some people living in big cities really like their cities, and some people living in the most rural areas have some sort of dialect and regional culture left, but the big average masses feel pretty indifferent about their region or city. There's no one who would make fun of you for being from one province, or brag about their own province.
Sure, there are some regional prejudices, but everyone knows they are for fun and that it's an outdated feeling. No one is really passionate about it.

I have the feeling it's different in Germany. First, as far as I know, nationalism and patriotism have been discouraged for the past decades, so if you want to be proud of where you live, you're better of being proud of your region than of your country. Secondly, up until not even two centuries ago, all these regions were their own independent states. It was less than 150 years ago that the last german states fought wars with each other.
So, while I think there is some form of regional pride everywhere, there are rather big differences in how much of it there is.

Having said that, Germany has some centralised policy that wouldn't ever be able to be implemented in the Netherlands. I'm still very, very impressed by the energiewende, for example.

[GolemsVoice]

Obviously every country has it's stereotypes about inhabitants of different towns or regions. But I feel like Germany has a bit more of that, and it's more widespread. May be just me, however. Russia, for example, mostly divides into Moscow, St. Petersburg, and everybody else.

[ForzaFiori]

Let me tell y'all a little about my neck of the woods. I live outside of Clemson, South Carolina, in the south eastern United States. the upstate of SC, where I live, JUST manages to reach into the Appalachian mountains, but the mountains are really old (for the Europeans in the crowd, they look incredibly similar to the Apennines in Italy), and Georgia and North Carolina snake around and cut off my state from the actual peaks of the mountains, so we really only have a lot of hills. The land was originally forest, and where there arent towns it still is. There's a few small to medium cities, but mostly its just small towns separated by a few miles in between each one. The weather varies from about 30 degrees Fahrenheit at the coldest of winter to just over 100 degrees in summer (i think it hit 110 a few weeks ago but thats REALLY rare), but we do deal with humidity that rarely gets below about 40%, which makes the heat, in my opinion at least, every bit as bad or worse than it is in the SW US.

My state, compared to the rest of the US, is tiny. We're the 40th largest state, and there are more people in NYC than in the entirety of South Carolina. Our largest city is like 130,000 people. We are the heart of Dixie, and have a reputation as a trouble maker (all because we started one little war 150 years ago...). We tend to have a rivalry with Viriginia, as both of us see ourselves as the lead state in the south east, and we have a long memory back to times when we were more important. Fun fact, Charleston - our main port city - was originally the largest port of the coast. all the way until the civil war, it had as much or more merchandise come through it as Philadelphia or New York.

The people here are NOT as bad as we're stereotyped (probably true of most of the world), but I can't deny that the stereotypes do exist for a reason. We tend to be conservative, we still use phrases that haven't been heard in the rest of the US for 2 generations, and we still tend to eat all the things we shouldn't and drink too much. But I can say that the area is NOT as racist as people tend to imagine. The Midwest tends to be worse than we are nowadays, and the southeast is actually integrating fairly well. It's also not all white rednecks - even though alot of african americans moved north between the 20s and 60s, we still have some of the highest populations of minorities here, mostly african americans and latinos. South Carolina also has a very large, very old jewish population, but I don't know if that's true across the rest of the south or not. I just remember reading about it in school.

We do tend to have a large amount of Confederate pride, though it is generally not intended in a racist way, but more of a... "the south east is WAY better than the rest of the US" kinda way. As most of the US may remember, we actually had the Confederate battle flag flying at the Confederate Memorial at our state capital until... I believe last year.

Where I live is actually in a college town (Go Tigers!), which means that I live in what is a small town half the year and a small city the other half, and that we get more influx of people and ideas than most of the south, making us both more diverse and more liberal than even the counties surrounding us. It's also only about an hour from the largest metro area in the state.

One of the things I have noticed people find weird when they get here is our dirt - The entire upstate is pretty much red clay, which means that in most places, after a few inches of top soil everything turns bright red and hard as a rock.

Wages and jobs here have never been great, and have been worse since the recession, but they're getting better. Plus, the cost of living is very low. Our gas and housing prices have pretty much always been on the lower side, and theres still enough undeveloped land that its relatively cheep to get land and build upon it. The weather gets hot in the summer, and it'd be nice to get anything other than ice storms in winter (maybe once per winter we get snow that will last through the night and melt the next day, usually in late January or early February), but it isn't incredibly rainy like Seattle or London, and its not constant dry sunlight like a desert. We have 4 full seasons and plenty of trees and flowers around to provide color through the year. The people tend to go out of their way to help one another and the idea of small town USA still lives on here. Honestly I think more people should come here. We have beautiful scenery, and you can hit almost any major biome except for rainforest and desert within a few hours. I personally live in forested hills, an hour from mountains, 4 hours from the best beaches in the US (The Grand Strands of southern North Carolina and northern South Carolina are AMAZING. flat, beautiful white sand for miles, with like 1/2 a mile of shallows before the shelf.), and on the way i'll go through coastal plains, swamps, regular plains, and we have rivers and lakes out the wazoo.

[Jon_Dahl]

Argentina

Thank you, Xapi, that was very interesting to read! You know... Something that has always interested me is this playful hostility between Argentines and Brazilians. Some of my Brazilian friends love Argentina and some "hate" your country, but it's not real hate. I like this complex love-hate relationship. If a Brazilian has visited at least one country, it's usually Argentina. People say that Paraguay is great for shopping, but still no one goes there... I guess that's just because all my Brazilian friends are poor :D Say, what's the general attitude towards Brazilians there in your country? And feel free to be open.

A black Brazilian woman whom I'm involved with visited Buenos Aires with her friends, all of whom are black women, and Argentine men were trying to hit on them all the time. She liked the attention she received and she received a whole lot of it. Another woman complained that the life of a Brazilian migrant worker is pretty hard.

[Scarlet Knight]

I love New York and am tempted to rave on it's features.

However, the best summary comes from John Adams, whose entry in his diary for Tuesday, Aug. 23, 1774, stated:

“With all the opulence and splendor of this city, there is very little good breeding to be found. We have been treated with an assiduous respect but I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. At their entertainments there is no conversation that is agreeable; there is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast and altogether. If they ask you a question, before you can utter three words of your answer they will break out upon you again and talk away.”

[ManInACandyVan]

The Philippines is a great place if you can stand the traffic and how the drivers act. :smallannoyed: We do have nice weather and plenty of tourist spots.

Hong Kong is clean, efficient and safe. I've never experienced traffic there, thankfully. It's a place that's always growing, always moving.

[Asmodean_]

I've never experienced traffic there, thankfully.

LIES!

I mean you must have used the MTR at least once, right?

[Maryring]

This is surely the same everywhere in the world.

People will always pick fights with their neighbours, until united by an outside threat. You spend your life rubbing up against the people next door, accumulating petty grievances, but most people feel more sympathy for them than some far-off 'other'. And the further you go, the more other people become. Sure, Bavarians might talk funny, but at least they're still speaking German. Etc., etc.

There's still several levels of degrees. While how Norwegians feel about other nations can be... variable and very political to even begin to discuss, I notice that a lot of people feel a kinship with Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden especially, but also Finland and Iceland. Also, people have a hard time explaining why at times, but people tend to like Scots a great deal. And sure, these are neighbouring countries, but they're still different countries with a different culture.

[BWR]

Norwegians love to tell Swede jokes, Swedes love to tell Norwegian jokes (and, apparently, have versions which only work based on Swedish 'understanding' of Norwegian), we both love to comment how Danes are unintelligible. Friendly ribbing all around. When it comes down to it, our cultures and language are pretty much identical when compared to everyone else. It's more like an extended family here in Scandinavia (+Finland & Iceland) than ancient rivals, at least from a Norwegian perspective.

[Ninja_Prawn]

There's still several levels of degrees. While how Norwegians feel about other nations can be... variable and very political to even begin to discuss, I notice that a lot of people feel a kinship with Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden especially, but also Finland and Iceland. Also, people have a hard time explaining why at times, but people tend to like Scots a great deal. And sure, these are neighbouring countries, but they're still different countries with a different culture.

That's... kind of what I was trying to say. Perhaps this Bedouin saying puts it more clearly:


"I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger."

I believe this is something that all humans experience, at least to some extent.

[BWR]

That's... kind of what I was trying to say. Perhaps this Bedouin saying puts it more clearly:


"I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger."

I believe this is something that all humans experience, at least to some extent.

We get what you were trying to say, it just isn't very applicable around here. It would be more like "My brother and I are cool, we are cool with our cousin. As long as strangers don't come along, everything's fine."

[Jon_Dahl]

That's... kind of what I was trying to say. Perhaps this Bedouin saying puts it more clearly:


"I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger."

I believe this is something that all humans experience, at least to some extent.

What if you're married to your cousin?

[Xapi]

Thank you, Xapi, that was very interesting to read! You know... Something that has always interested me is this playful hostility between Argentines and Brazilians. Some of my Brazilian friends love Argentina and some "hate" your country, but it's not real hate. I like this complex love-hate relationship. If a Brazilian has visited at least one country, it's usually Argentina. People say that Paraguay is great for shopping, but still no one goes there... I guess that's just because all my Brazilian friends are poor :D Say, what's the general attitude towards Brazilians there in your country? And feel free to be open.

A black Brazilian woman whom I'm involved with visited Buenos Aires with her friends, all of whom are black women, and Argentine men were trying to hit on them all the time. She liked the attention she received and she received a whole lot of it. Another woman complained that the life of a Brazilian migrant worker is pretty hard.

Brazil and Argentina are brothers. But we're not like happy siblings who always love each other at all times, but more like competitive brothers who care about each other, want the other to do well, but, you know, not as well as I'm doing, and trying to one-up each other. This, however, is mostly a sport issue. Like, we want our (real) football team to be better than theirs, and we'll laugh at them when they lose 7-1 to Germany, and we'll argue endlessly that Maradona was bigger than Pelé (obviously).

It would take a very unstable person to take this sibling rivalry to the personal level, IE: think less of a person or become actually violent against someone because they are Brazilian/Argentinian. Are there isolated cases of unstable people that do those things? Probably, but they are virtually nonexistant. If we meet a brazilian, we'd be happy to treat them with the respect you'd treat any foreigner, or person, even as we joke about whatever is going on at the moment regarding sports.

We argentinians (those that can afford air travel at least) are also very likely to have been to a beach in Brazil. We humbly accept defeat in that front: They have the best beaches, by far.

Regarding more... personal relationships, I can certainly see that brazilian women would find themselves hit on once every block, since argentinian men are stereotipically flirty, and brazilian women are stereotipically forthcoming and liberal when it comes to intimate relations. Add that to the typical brazilian body types (that come from a mix of caucasian and african descent) that are not at all common in Argentina, and, well, the ladies that come south to Argentina can cause some stares, to say the least. I've also heard from men that have gone to Brazil as singles (I went there with my wife) that they also enjoy the attention of the brazilian ladies.

For some reason, I haven't heard much about the other way around, or about homosexual interactions, except for one funny anecdote that I'll share at some other time because I'm leaving right about now.

[Jon_Dahl]

Regarding more... personal relationships, I can certainly see that brazilian women would find themselves hit on once every block, since argentinian men are stereotipically flirty, and brazilian women are stereotipically forthcoming and liberal when it comes to intimate relations. Add that to the typical brazilian body types (that come from a mix of caucasian and african descent) that are not at all common in Argentina, and, well, the ladies that come south to Argentina can cause some stares, to say the least. I've also heard from men that have gone to Brazil as singles (I went there with my wife) that they also enjoy the attention of the brazilian ladies.

Ohh, I hear you, my brother, I hear you. You speak the truth.

[ForzaFiori]

There's still several levels of degrees. While how Norwegians feel about other nations can be... variable and very political to even begin to discuss, I notice that a lot of people feel a kinship with Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden especially, but also Finland and Iceland. Also, people have a hard time explaining why at times, but people tend to like Scots a great deal. And sure, these are neighbouring countries, but they're still different countries with a different culture.

I think part of that would have to do with the fact that the cultural and ethnic makeups of the countries are very similar - In the US, we tend to be more friendly towards canada, whom we share a mother country with, than we do with Mexico. Even though we've actually had more skirmishes and battles against canadians, if I remember correctly. the scandanavian countries all come from the same basic root people, and they're small enough that the culture can remain similar across the whole region, as opposed to a place like the US, where we have (and this is just the large groupings of cultures) - Northeastern, southeastern, midwestern, northwestern, pacific, southwestern, alaskan, and hawaiian cultures, plus the cultures of our various minority ethnic groups scattered all throughout the country. and while some of those cultures will be related, It means that if I drive north for half a day, Im in a state that no longer eats the food I eat, they don't talk the way I do, the people look different since different people moved there, and in some places even the base values of the culture will be completely at odds.

Dont get me wrong, when it comes down to it, Americans will band together against outsiders (I think we've proved that for good and bad multiple times), but we have ALOT more internal strife than smaller, more homogeneous countries, and it tends to be of a greater magnitude.

[Murk]

Dont get me wrong, when it comes down to it, Americans will band together against outsiders (I think we've proved that for good and bad multiple times), but we have ALOT more internal strife than smaller, more homogeneous countries, and it tends to be of a greater magnitude.

On the other hand, I don't think I have ever heard from inter-state rivalry, competition or strife in modern times. Sure, I've heard some jokes about Idaho potatoes and living in New Jersey, but I don't think I've ever heard someone from the US being very proud of the state they live in, claiming it's the best state or that their neighbouring states are stupid. More often, they'll talk about general regions ("Southeast") or the specific city they live in.
Or am I wrong here, and is some state-nationalism common among insiders?

[2D8HP]

the US, where we have (and this is just the large groupings of cultures) - Northeastern, southeastern, midwestern, northwestern, pacific, southwestern, alaskan, and hawaiian cultures, plus the cultures of our various minority ethnic groups scattered all throughout the country. and while some of those cultures will be related, It means that if I drive north for half a day, I'm in a state that no longer eats the food I eat, they don't talk the way I do, the people look different since different people moved there, and in some places even the base values of the culture will be completely at odds.

Dont get me wrong, when it comes down to it, Americans will band together against outsiders (I think we've proved that for good and bad multiple times), but we have ALOT more internal strife than smaller, more homogeneous countries, and it tends to be of a greater magnitude.


More often, they'll talk about general regions ("Southeast") or the specific city they live in.
Or am I wrong here, and is some state-nationalism common among insiders?
When I worked 50 miles away in San Jose, California sometimes my co-workers would say I had a "strange accent" and ask me were I was from, I'd tell them Oakland but my dad migrated from New Jersey, and my mom from Orange County (My great-great-grandparents would be from what are now the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland in the U.K., Kansas in the U.S.A., Germany, and Poland, so a Lutheran German married a Jewish Pole, who's daughter married an Anglican British-American, who's daughter married an Irish Catholic, that's the way of the U.S.A.). Many of my old co-workers commuted in from outside the metropolitan San Francisco Bay area, and often had what sounded to me like accents of the old Confederacy (SE USA and Texas), including one guy who commuted from Stockton and had a "Southern" accent, while his brother who lived in San Jose did not! The "inland" guys would be more likely to listen to "country" music, "inner-ring suburban" guys to "rock" music, and "inner-city" guys to "rhythm and blues".
Growing up I often heard people speaking derisively of "L.A." and southern California.

With the possible exception of "Appalachian" West Virginia, which seperated from "Tidewater" Virginia in the Nineteenth century, most of the state boundaries in the U.S.A. don't seem to map very well with what feel like different regions.

Some books I've read on regional cultural differences in the United States:

The Nine Nations of North America (http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2014/07/03/where-do-borders-need-to-be-redrawn/nine-nations-of-north-america-30-years-later),
and the latter
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which-of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/),
but one is cited by other books and periodicals more often:
Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion's_Seed) by David Hackett Fischer
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/f/f5/David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg/220px-David_Hackett_Fischer_-_Albion%27s_Seed_Four_British_Folkways_in_America. jpeg

Which details how four different folkways in the United States got their starts from four different migrations:

East Anglia to Massachusetts:
The Exodus of the English Puritans (Pilgrims influenced the Northeastern United States' corporate and educational culture).

The South of England to Virginia:
Distressed Cavaliers and indentured Servants (Gentry influenced the Southern United States' plantation culture).

North Midlands to the Delaware Valley::
The Friends' Migration (Quakers influenced the Middle Atlantic and Midwestern United States' industrial culture).

Borderlands to the Backcountry:
The Flight from North Britain (Scotch-Irish, or border English, influenced the Western United States' ranch culture and the Southern United States' common agrarian culture).

Recommended
:smile:

[Asmodean_]

As far as relationships in Oceania go, it's Australia vs. New Zealand first (but in a friendly manner), then Australia and New Zealand vs. the rest of the world (mostly the UK and USA). This is especially prevalent in forward slash partly born by rugby union.


(COME ON 8-42??)

[veti]

As far as relationships in Oceania go, it's Australia vs. New Zealand first (but in a friendly manner), then Australia and New Zealand vs. the rest of the world (mostly the UK and USA). This is especially prevalent in forward slash partly born by rugby union.


(COME ON 8-42??)

Are you trying to suggest that's an untypical result...?

From NZ's perspective, we're also very conscious of the rest of the South Pacific. A lot of people - relative to our population at least - come here from places like Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Kiribati, Tuvalu, and this makes us think of those countries as "related", too. So there's almost as much joy in thrashing Samoa at rugby as Australia.

[Grinner]

Or am I wrong here, and is some state-nationalism common among insiders?

We've learned to channel our aggression into sports, same as most other countries. :smalltongue:

More seriously, it varies a lot. Some people talk about regional differences. Some people don't care. I haven't travelled enough to know how prevalent either opinion is, but generally it's not an issue either way, just something to talk about.

[Razade]

Northeastern, southeastern, midwestern, northwestern, pacific, southwestern, alaskan, and hawaiian cultures, plus the cultures of our various minority ethnic groups scattered all throughout the country.

This is...really really reductive. As in absurdly reductive. Alaska also doesn't have a seperate culture from its surrounding region. You've missed Appalachia entirely which in no way falls into a "North West" mentality. You've omitted the interconnection of the Four Corner States with the associated Native tribes which goes well beyond "minority" ethnic groups, completly steamrolled over the mix of cultures found at the boarders of Mexico and Canada and the bleed over there in. California is divided between North and South with the South being far more closely related to Cascadia than the North is. Texan South Westernness is far more Southern than Arizonan or Californian South Westernness. Really just as reductive as one can get.

I'd urge anyone whose actually interested in this discussion read up on what 2D already posted but also look at American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America. While neither the stuff cited above or the book I've cited (I believe) accurately sums up the cultural mainstays in North America they certainly give it a real go and you can probably follow the issues raised further if you're really really interested. I'd love to go into it but the discussion is very much tied to politics and religion which is a no go here. You can get kind of a summary of the book here (http://www.businessinsider.com/the-11-nations-of-the-united-states-2015-7).



Dont get me wrong, when it comes down to it, Americans will band together against outsiders (I think we've proved that for good and bad multiple times), but we have ALOT more internal strife than smaller, more homogeneous countries, and it tends to be of a greater magnitude.

This...isn't really true either. Also it's a lot, there's a space. The strife is, mostly, along political lines which we can't talk about here and less to do with state boarders. Maybe in the South you'll find stuff like that going back to the War but that's pretty political too.


On the other hand, I don't think I have ever heard from inter-state rivalry, competition or strife in modern times.

A lot of it comes in the form of sports rivalries.


Sure, I've heard some jokes about Idaho potatoes and living in New Jersey, but I don't think I've ever heard someone from the US being very proud of the state they live in, claiming it's the best state or that their neighbouring states are stupid. More often, they'll talk about general regions ("Southeast") or the specific city they live in.
Or am I wrong here, and is some state-nationalism common among insiders?

I'd say you haven't listened to enough places. I could explain to you, at length, as to why Florida and Kansas are two of the worst places you could ever choose to live. State nationalism isn't like country nationalism because we've had this idea of AMERICA since...well around World War One is when it really kicked off as a way to unify the nation. You'll find a lot more State level nationalism in the South owing to their more independent mentality than the "North".

tl;dr: The U.S is really complex and a discussion on nationalism and culture is difficult to get into without politics and religion.

[Murk]

Fair enough. I can only offer the perspective of an outsider, but of course the reality is a complex thingy (thingies always seem to be complex).

[Hoosigander]

This may be because of my own family's background but I 've always felt there was something odd about the way books like Albion's Seed and American Nations sub-divided America, namely that only the first waves of European immigration count. For example, the NYC and its immediate region is called "New Netherland" and its distinctive identity is traced to the Dutch Settlement, but what is there in modern NYC that is culturally Dutch? Sure, even in the early 19th century there was heavy Dutch influence in New York (our 8th president, Martin Van Buren was a native Dutch speaker), but NYC's and northern New Jersey's present distinctiveness as a regional culture probably owes more to late 19th/early 20th century Italian/Irish/Ashkenazi Jewish immigration.

The area of the country I'm from is accounted part of Yankeedom, and indeed migrants from upstate New York and New England were important in the history of the region. But I'd argue that German/Polish/Scandinavian influence forms the base element for a lot of Upper Midwestern culture today. Kielbasa and sauerkraut aren't Yankee dishes. (Perhaps with some mustard on rye bread, mmmm)

[2D8HP]

But I'd argue that German/Polish/Scandinavian influence forms the base element for a lot of Upper Midwestern culture today. Kielbasa and sauerkraut aren't Yankee dishes.(Perhaps with some mustard on rye bread, mmmm)Yum, that does sound really, really good right now, maybe some onions too (I got hungry just reading it)!
What beverage? I'm usually partial to English style Brown Ales (NewCastle and Downtown Brown), but I remember liking the German Beck's Dark and Spaten Munich beers, or maybe wine instead. Riesling?

[Gnomvid]

This may be because of my own family's background but I 've always felt there was something odd about the way books like Albion's Seed and American Nations sub-divided America, namely that only the first waves of European immigration count. For example, the NYC and its immediate region is called "New Netherland" and its distinctive identity is traced to the Dutch Settlement, but what is there in modern NYC that is culturally Dutch? Sure, even in the early 19th century there was heavy Dutch influence in New York (our 8th president, Martin Van Buren was a native Dutch speaker), but NYC's and northern New Jersey's present distinctiveness as a regional culture probably owes more to late 19th/early 20th century Italian/Irish/Ashkenazi Jewish immigration.

The area of the country I'm from is accounted part of Yankeedom, and indeed migrants from upstate New York and New England were important in the history of the region. But I'd argue that German/Polish/Scandinavian influence forms the base element for a lot of Upper Midwestern culture today. Kielbasa and sauerkraut aren't Yankee dishes. (Perhaps with some mustard on rye bread, mmmm)

"New Netherland" don't you mean "New Amsterdam"? that's what the Dutch settlers called what's now NYC

Edit: also neither Kilbasa nor Sauerkraut have anything to do with Scandinavia sour cabbage does though which is different as it's not fermented as Sauerkraut is

[Hoosigander]

"New Netherland" don't you mean "New Amsterdam"? that's what the Dutch settlers called what's now NYC

Edit: also neither Kilbasa nor Sauerkraut have anything to do with Scandinavia sour cabbage does though which is different as it's not fermented as Sauerkraut is

New Netherland is what Colin Woodward calls it in his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America which is what I was responding to.

I was arguing that the culture of the Upper Midwest is nowadays characterized by a blend of northern European cultures that immigrated in the late 19th, early 20th century which included (amongst them my own great grandparents) Poles and Germans, which were two thirds of my Poles/Germans/Scandinavian formulation. Kielbasa is a Polish dish and Sauerkraut is German, although pickled cabbage is part of a tasty Polish dish called Kapusta.

[Razade]

New Netherland is what Colin Woodward calls it in his book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America which is what I was responding to.

I was arguing that the culture of the Upper Midwest is nowadays characterized by a blend of northern European cultures that immigrated in the late 19th, early 20th century which included (amongst them my own great grandparents) Poles and Germans, which were two thirds of my Poles/Germans/Scandinavian formulation. Kielbasa is a Polish dish and Sauerkraut is German, although pickled cabbage is part of a tasty Polish dish called Kapusta.

I did say he didn't get it exact. It's a broader narrative. The fact they're part of a different group of immigrants means little, it's a map of sociopolitical culture as much as ethnic cultures. The Upper Midwest has more in common with "Yankeedom" politically than it does with the Midlands.

[BWR]

For those interested in learning about Norway: A Frog in the Fjord (https://afroginthefjord.com/)

A French lady who moved to Norway and started a blog (in English) about her experiences and observations of Norwegians and Norway in general. For the most part she's spot on, and people complaining about her being wrong just don't want to admit she has a point.

[warty goblin]

I live in Iowa. Where I am now (central Iowa) is flat, and has corn. Since the price of corn has fallen a bit the last few years, we also have soybeans again.

But I grew up in the northwest corner of Iowa; in an area known as the Driftless. This is the corner of Iowa, going into Minnesota and Wisconsin that got missed by the glaciers during the last ice age, so there's hills and bluffs, and a much stronger tendency to grow forest than most of the great plains states. It's a genuinely beautiful part of the world, there's not a lot of big, spectacular vistas, but many pleasant and lovely little places tucked away here and there. There aren't really any major cities (or even minor cities), but many of the small towns here have weathered the decline of the family farm and the great rural exodus better than in the rest of the state, and so are fairly vibrant and alive. There's good walking and biking trails, the restaurants are several cuts above what you'd expect from dinky little midwestern towns, and the steep, unfarmable hills means there's lots of trees along the river valleys and the roads are twisty, confusing mess to navigate. My little corner was mostly settled by German and Norwegian immigrants; but since the world wars, the most prominent ethnic group is Norwegian, so there's a thriving folk art community as well.

[Hoosigander]

I did say he didn't get it exact. It's a broader narrative. The fact they're part of a different group of immigrants means little, it's a map of sociopolitical culture as much as ethnic cultures. The Upper Midwest has more in common with "Yankeedom" politically than it does with the Midlands.

I don't have any problem with the regions he draws up in the book, and they work as an analysis of regions that tend to vote in certain ways. He does, however, try to connect those regions to particular cultures and I just plain find it odd that even in areas which were highly affected by 19th century immigration he always ties things to 17th century immigrant groups. Besides, more recent immigrants (anything after the 17th century) are critically important to understanding which regions behave in what ways politically. The urban political machines that historically enabled one unnamed political party's electoral dominance of large parts of Woodward's Yankeedom were built on later waves of immigrants. Nor are the waves of northern European immigrants to the Upper Midwest insignificant to the political history of those regions.

[ForzaFiori]

This is...really really reductive. As in absurdly reductive. Alaska also doesn't have a seperate culture from its surrounding region. You've missed Appalachia entirely which in no way falls into a "North West" mentality. You've omitted the interconnection of the Four Corner States with the associated Native tribes which goes well beyond "minority" ethnic groups, completly steamrolled over the mix of cultures found at the boarders of Mexico and Canada and the bleed over there in. California is divided between North and South with the South being far more closely related to Cascadia than the North is. Texan South Westernness is far more Southern than Arizonan or Californian South Westernness. Really just as reductive as one can get.

This...isn't really true either. Also it's a lot, there's a space. The strife is, mostly, along political lines which we can't talk about here and less to do with state boarders. Maybe in the South you'll find stuff like that going back to the War but that's pretty political too.

I'd say you haven't listened to enough places. I could explain to you, at length, as to why Florida and Kansas are two of the worst places you could ever choose to live. State nationalism isn't like country nationalism because we've had this idea of AMERICA since...well around World War One is when it really kicked off as a way to unify the nation. You'll find a lot more State level nationalism in the South owing to their more independent mentality than the "North".

tl;dr: The U.S is really complex and a discussion on nationalism and culture is difficult to get into without politics and religion.

state nationalism is incredibly intense in the SE. We still believe in America, yes, but that the SE is by far the best part of the country, and generally southerners believe that their state is the best part of the SE, and their region of their state is the best part of their state. Part of that does go back to the Civil War (though, without getting political, I think it has more to do with the states rights issues from before the war rather than just still being mad that we lost. We've always been more about our own state than the country as a whole it seems), but I have no idea if it's like that in the rest of the country. I haven't left the SE since I was like...11.

There's no way I could have listed every single region of the US, So I tried to list the major, over arching ones that are used by most people. Also, Appalachia is in the eastern US, no where near the NW, and is generally a part of either the NE (in the case of say, Appalachian Pennsylvania), or the SE (the area I live in, the "uplands" of Virginia, the carolinas, and georgia), and while there is a difference between say appalachian and the respective low country of each state, the appalachian regions have more in common with the low country of their own state than with the appalachian area of a state that is 1000 miles away (for instance, the culture where I live in Upstate SC is MUCH more similar to the culture of say, Charleston, in the low country, than it is in Appalachian Pennsylvania, or even in a place like West Virginia. I'll admit that I could be wrong about Alaska having a distinct culture, but I just figured it wouldn't be like most other places in the US (which culture do you believe it falls into? Pacific NW?), but to the others, native tribes of the 4 corners would be part of the indian/ethnic cultures (fun fact, since after whites, the largest group in the US is like 15% of the population, that makes pretty much every ethnicity a 'minority'), california is split between a form of SW culture (Southern california, along with the places that used to be owned by Mexico) and Pacific NW (Northern california, which tends to be similar to oregon and washington.). The mixed cultures along the border would either be minority cultures (IE, the culture of latinos), or the regional culture (SW culture has massive influence from mexico, duh, because it was part of them. The northwest is gonna be influenced by Canada as a part of its culture. If your from Mexico or Canada and still live just like you did there, then you are part of a minority/ethnic culture - a culture from a people that isn't the 'majority' [at this point, actually a plurality] in America). Texas is half southern, half southwestern, depending on the place. It's not reductionist, its just general, because I wasn't trying to type out a response this long originally. Please try to be less condescending next time though, if you don't mind, especially if you're then going to make ridiculous mistakes yourself.

[Fishybugs]

I live in Washington State. The pearl of the Pacific Northwest. Specifically, in Olympia, right at the southern tip of the Puget Sound. If you're the outdoorsy-type at all, then Washington has everything you could possible want. From ocean to an 18,000 foot mountain in an hour drive. Ski resorts, thousands of acres of state and national parks, one of the last rainforests in North America, as well as protected waterways for boating. Any type of terrain is available for any type of sport.

Not outdoorsy? Washington is a burgeoning tech capital with Microsoft and Boeing, as well as major entertainment such as Wizards of the Coast within an hour drive of me.

Of course, the trade-off is that the cost of living here is about 7-14% above the national average, and rising. The word is getting out that the weather here isn't as bad as we advertise. :smallwink:

[Ninja_Prawn]

The word is getting out that the weather here isn't as bad as we advertise. :smallwink:

Mhm. Once of my closest friends moved to that region last year. She's not one to stay put; it was her 8th move in 5 years - but she loves Washington so much that she's putting down roots and starting a family there!

[2D8HP]

I live in Washington State...... The word is getting out that the weather here isn't as bad as we advertise. :smallwink:My wife grew up in Seattle (she's a U.W. alum whereas I'm an uneducated Troglodyte!), and she often described it as "depressing", but when I visited Seattle in the winter of 1998 the weather in seemed little different from San Francisco's, and the City seemed like a San Francisco intertwined with Oakland. But how much latter the sunrise was, was very noticible! Despite that I quite liked Seattle, it had some great bookshops!
Portland, Oregon which I only saw from the inside of a Greyhound bus and bus station seemed much more distinct. Portland seemed like an old dense City like San Francisco, but surrounded by miles of forest instead of suburbs.
The only other places I've seen outside of California has been a week in Washington, D.C. and two weeks in Ottawa, and a day in Montreal. Despite being francophone, Montreal seemed the closest to home!

[Ninja_Prawn]

Portland seemed like an old dense City like San Francisco

From what I've heard, Portland was deliberately laid out in small blocks so that there would be more corner lots - because corner lots fetch higher prices!

Whether that's true or not, people also say that the layout has fostered a unique culture. I'd like to visit someday, for sure.