About the "you're not Italian" part: Europeans are generally super happy and welcoming if you tell them you have some distant familial connections from their country. They'll be thrilled to talk to you about their country, language and history and we welcome you if you come to us with a sincere interest. What people don't like is when Americans just blatantly claim to be something they are not, and then go on to speak on behalf of, or in the name of a community they are not actually a part of. It also doesn't help that the things those people say "as someone who's Irish" or "as an Italian" usually range from the utterly ridiculous to the downright offensive.
I'm reminded of Hayley Alexis here on YT coming back to Florida after living a while in Bavaria and then got told by the "Germans" there that don't even speak the language, let alone know anything non-Hollywood about the culture, she can't be German because she's black. *That* reasoning is 80 years out of date, and Germany wants nothing to do with these posers while people that move here are more than welcome, as long as they put in effort. If those people had said she can't be German because Bavaria isn't Germany, they would have shown some understanding and we would all have had a good laugh. The same way I am amused by the concept of having "family" over in the US just because some of them tracked back their line to a guy who emigrated in the 19th century I also happen to be related to. At least being family there is technically true.
There are 80 millions of Italians and descendants of Italians around the world. If they keep their culture and language, they're still Italians. From the next years, it would be possible for these people to return to Italy if they desire so. Our Government wants to open the doors on all the Italians without citizenship that wants to return back home. And plans are laid down right now to welcome them back. We also needs them to rinvigurate the Economy of the country.
I think this comes from the fact America is a nation of immigrants, and that a lot of their states / cities / regions are still largely populated by descendents of immigrants from specific places. It is functionally useful sometimes for Americans to say to other Americans "I am an Irish American" or whatever, because it says something culturally about their cultural experience. That gets shortened to "I am Irish" pre-internet, because the "American" part is obvious to everyone you're talking to. Fast forward to a much more integrated planet and people are still saying "Irish" instead of "Irish American" and have also now - erroneously - come to the conclusion that "Irish" in America is the same as "Irish" in Ireland. Which is obviously absurd to a European, but to an American who has grown up in a bubble of people identifying their cultural experiences by describing themselves using a national identity that they don't really have... it's confusing to Americans when we turn around and say "No you're not". Even if it's true. I think ultimately Americans maybe just need to acknolwedge that the suffix "American" is the important part of their national identity and that being "X-American" is wildly different from being X. It's also becoming less and less useful as a cultural marker in the US, as the states are very much settled into their own cultural identities now, which may owe something to the ancestral roots of the settlers, but are very much their own things at this point. I find most Europeans are generally quite good at changing their word choice dependent on the people they're speaking to, and Americans are completely incapable of doing it.
@@danielefabbro822 You made up a lot of things, people living for generations in other countries are not Italians. Not only in the USA but also in Brazil and Argentina there are many naturalized descendants of Italians, on the coast of Brazil, like Porto Alegre, there are some old people talking Talian (despite the name, that language is almost identical to Venetian dialect, curious enough, their ancestors were in Brazil probably before the union of Italy, or immediately after, because of the famine), still they are not Italians. Also, there are no plans to welcome back these descendants of Italians. What we have in our law is "Ius sanguinis", that is a long and difficult procedure to just obtain citizenship (no other commodity is provided by the government). To ask for citizenship they have to provide all documents of birth, marriage, death, of each person in their direct paternal line (some exceptions with maternal line). I think not many have these documents nowadays.
It feels as if he's so careful because he's been terrorized by europeans correcting every single mistake he's made. I mean let's be honest this guy's audience is europeans that hope to see a dumb american so we can feel superior. I mean i'm doing that right now and got disappointed :,(
We have a divided town on the border between Poland and Czechia too, it's called Cieszyn. During Covid, there were posters on both sides, saying: "I miss you, Pole" and "I miss you, Czech" in both languages :)
In Kazakhstan, it is customary to refer to Europe as a "part of the world" rather than as a continent, because Eurasia is the continent, while Asia is a part of the world, as is Europe.
In Norway we have a difference between continents and verdensdeler (litterally translated world-parts). But Europe is its own in both, which is kind of weird.
Continents are really not as rigid as one might think. Countries disagree on what continents exist. In the western world Europe and Asia are seperate continents, even though they are literally one land mass
@@thepepchannel7940 We sometimes divide continents not only by connected land mass but also by extreme political and social culture diferences, even adding strong climate diferences. Some countries belong to European continent (not European Union per se) and are not even connected like the UK for example. So I believe the reason Europe and Asia are considered two different continents, despite being a single landmass, is purely because they have very strong diferences, at the political and cultural level, plus also a few particular unique climate characteristics between the two. And this division has been established, centuries ago, is nothing new.
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 Yes, "had" is the right word ... in the times of Kingdom Come ... we have Czech crowns now (and if you include Czechoslovak crowns too, then we have had those for last cca 100 years)
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 that is a very old currency that stopped its use in like 1650, a lot of countries had some form of older currency that were from precious metals like silver back then
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 Also, historically, there was another currency manufactured and used in the lands of Bohemia - Tollars, does this name ring a bell? :) Germanic merchants from HRE were using this currency in the new world - hence today's name - Dollar
We’re Dutch or Polish or French or Italian or whatever because we have our national identities, and traditions, and of course languages. And at the same time we’re all European because we’re sharing so much common culture and values. Way more than most of us are aware of, and certainly more than some ignorant nationalists want to tell us. Different but still familiar. It won’t be exactly the same all over the place (and there’s no need for that) but very often it is pretty similar. Having travelled all over Europe, I found stunning landscapes, rich heritage, interesting food and, most important thing, friendy people everywhere. I really like my home continent.
Exactly. People who confuse patriotism with bigoted nationalism are the cancer that is consuming our societies. Not to mention they're just so easy to exploit and used to sow chaos between the countries, just like what Russian trolls are trying to do.
Same here. I love cycling from Germany into France and enjoying the difference. We also have lots of French people crossing the border to Germany. We enjoy each other's country, but still have our own identity.
@@Korschtal Same sentiment here from France! And at the same time, like the OP said, we're different but still similar. I watched some videos from a German woman who lives in the U.S. and she made some videos about the differences between the U.S. and Germany, and it strucked me how much France and Germany are similar compared to the U.S.
@@acmh7538 When you really dig into their History, you realise people got mixed geneticaly speaking and it's just a giant melting pot. It's very visible at the borders where you really have a cultural mixing between a bunch of countries.
Funny enough, Romania is NOT slavic, is Latin :))) it has more similitudes with Italy, Spain and France. We understand and learn very easily these languages.
Linguistics sure - but culturally and mentally it is still placed firmly in "eastern Europe". The shadow of the Soviet Union spectre is still present in large parts of "eastern europe".
Because you are so anti Russian it's stoopid?? Pirate shultz on his way put and whoever you get in next as Chancellor is going to be a war hawk. You could try a bit of diplomacy instead of sending iron cross tanks east again?
But define Russia.. cause they differ hugely throughout the span of the country. Also.. in general i am fine with 98% of the Russians. I do have a problem with the economical and political top. But then again.. i am disliking most politicians and the rich having the big companies worldwide.
7:32 German is spoken in Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, eastern Belgium, South Tyrol (part of Italy), Alsace (part of France), northeastern Lorraine (part of France) and northern Schleswig (part of Denmark).
also some parts of Czechia, Hungary and Slovenia. You can just cross the border and order anything in german no problem, at least in the border regions to Austria.
@@Echoak95 Yes, of course. I have only listed the regions where German is the/an official language. It‘s often also the language they speak in school (not as foreign language but as normal language in which all classes are held). There are of course many, many more regions where many people can simply speak German because they often communicate with Germans (or German speaking people from other countries) or have German speaking ancestors. But their official language is not German.
Fun video. Learned some things about my own continent I didn't even know. One little correction: Europe (continent, not EU) is bigger than the USA. US: 9.834.000 km² Europe: 10.530.000 km². And that's European part of Russia and Greenland not included.
@@PalleRasmussen Geographically it is, but geopolitically Greenland is part of Europe due to it being settled by the Vikings. So that could be argued as One all? 😉😆
@ralphhathaway-coley5460 the Norse disappeared in the early 15th century, being replaced by the Thule Iniuts who had originally arrived in the northwest at the same time or just after the Norse arrived in the southwest. Only in the 18th century did it get recolonised by Denmark. Today it has a mixed culture of Danish and Inuit, but there is much anti-Danish sentiment and dreams of independence in many places, and the US is working to further their influence. So it will probably not be Danish for much longer. They do like the Danish welfare state and the € 600000 we send them every year to sustain that very system, which they could not afford themselves.
Maltese here. I'm just satisfied people acknowledge we exist altogether now, since growing up I had nothing but stares of confusion whenever I told people where I'm from, amusing yet unrecognisable accent and all.
You have a beautiful country, rich of history and filled with wonderful people of all kinds and heritages dude! I went to Malta about a Year ago and can wait to visit agin. Greetings from Germany. 😊
As for American tourist, too many have the habit of shouting across the shop or restaurant as if the are in their back yard. Basically their whole demeanor is like they are in their back yard. Too much at home, getting too close and wanting to interact with everybody. But this is the type that screams "OMG" all the time when they are at home. It is not all Americans. It´s the type that feels Europe is like a kind of Disneyland. I do find there is often a certain intitlement attached to those as wel. Like they pay for it so they should be served upon like royalty. It doesn´t work that way here.
It doesn't work that way anywhere really.. It's just entitled and spoiled asshats that has gotten away with that sort of behaviour in too many places too many times..
As if Europeans ain't loud and obnoxious while in other countries... I mean outside of Europe that is. 🤣 Typical Swedish everyday behaviors just disappear at the very least, I remember our trip to Brazil and i almost suffered secondhand embarrassment seeing other Swede's "act like Americans".😆 But yeah Americans are a bit worse in that respect.
Man, I only been to the USA twice, but when you said that it would be cool if Americans would learn 3 languages before the graduate highschool, I can't help but banter a little bit and say I would be fine if they learned 1 language before they graduate highschool. Some younger people in the USA I had the (dis)pleasure of interacting with were speaking something vaguely resembling English, but I couldn't figure out what they want from me. Probably not even their fault, it does seem like your school system is just falling apart.
I was speaking 4 languages when I graduated high school, 3 mandatory (Finnish, Swedish, English) and one voluntary (German). For me it is very difficult to imagine a school environment where you are not learning a foreign language.
@@Searover749 Yes, but they should start with their native language first... :D You can't even consider the gibberish they speak as an accent or dialect, it's just nonsense :D On the other hand, if an American speaks clear english, I understand him much better then a Brit, because Brits tend to overdo their accent, only because they are somehow proud of it :D
3:22 WHen the "Miniatur Wunderland" in Hamburg, Germany (the world's biggest model railway) opened their "Scandinavia"-Section they invited a bunch of politicians, including the ambassador from FINLAND. Apparently at some point during the event the guy pulled one of the Braun-Brothers (who own/run the wunderland) aside and went "I'm thankful for the invite, I love the place you built here, but..why am I at a Scandinavian event?"
To clarify to whom might not know the difference between 'Scandinavia' and the Nordics (Nordic countries): Scandinavia is: 🔸Norway 🔸Sweden 🔸Denmark I won't go into the story why Denmark is 'Scandinavian', except for the language. The name Scandinavia is from the Scandinavian mountain ridge through Norway and the west and north-west of Sweden. The Scandinavian peninsula. The five Nordic countries: 🔸Finland 🔸Sweden 🔸Norway 🔸Iceland 🔸Denmark (also the Faroese Islands. Greenland belongs to Denmark too, but is NOT considered a Nordic country. With one exception we speak Scandinavian languages, also called Nordic languages, which isn't entirely correct. Iceland and the Faroese Islands (the latter technically is Denmark) became occupied by Scandinavians, Vikings, speaking Old Norse. Old Norse was the common language in what today is Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The Danes are born with a huge, hot potato in their mouth, and can't spit it out. So we must be understanding, and accept that if you're not Danish you will have a hell trying to understand what they say.🙄. Otherwise Norwegian, especially their written variaty "bokmål' book " is very similar to Danish. Spoken is Norwegian and Swedish similar. We three can read and understand each other's languages, but speaking can be trickier. In general Swedes can understand Norwegian decently well, but Danish... Not so much. Norwegians usually understand Swedish well, and very often Danish. The Danes are sometimes victims of their own pronunciation, My experience is either they understand Swedish well, or not at all. But Norwegian works fine. The situation between Icelandic and Faroese is about the same. Reading can work well, speaking can be more troublesome, however, but some say it's no problem. Also, the language spoken on the Finnish islands Åland is Swedish, and in two minor areas of mainland Finland too. (Finland used to be a part of Sweden for 500-600 years, until a big country east of Finland invaded it. 1809 Sweden lost Finland. 1917 Finland managed to peacefully sneak out of the grip of the Russian claws.) In Finland they speak a TOTALLY different language than the rest of the Nordics. Finnish is very closely related to Estonian. Some may ask: "Where is Estonia?" Just across Finnish Bay, a part of the Baltic Sea, and there it is, the Baltics, south of Finland, Estonia is the northern, Latvia in the middle, Lithuania in the south. Latvian and Lithuanian are closely related to each other, NOT to Estonian. NEITHER of these languages* are related to Slavic languages, for instance Russian or Polish. Together with Poland and Germany we surround the Baltic Sea (including Åland's Sea, the Bothnian Sea etc. Well, there are two spots we don't cover; furthest into the Finnish bay there is a city called St Petersburg, Russia. A small strip there is Russian. And Kaliningrad, by the sea, squeezed in between Poland and Lithuania. Poor Russia... 😆 *Correction; Latvian and Lithuanian are in the family of Slavic languages, but on another branch than the rest of living Slavic languages. Prussian that was spoken in what now is northern Poland and Kaliningrad. Also a couple more small languages, in the Baltic language family.
@@Shan_Dalamani I know. 'Hans ö', or Tartupaluk. Years ago, the 'Whiskey war' went on between the Danish and Canadian border guards for several years. It wasn't clear to which country the island belonged. One side put their flag, the other took it down and placed theirs instead. A couple of times they left a bottle of whiskey or other liquor there to the other guards. This friendly little 'war' ended when documents were finally signed, and they split the island. When Greenland declares independence in the future, I guess they will have the Danish part of the island.
@@annabackman3028 Yep, we have some interesting wars sometimes. Whiskey with the Danes, turbot with the Spanish... the Danes were a lot friendlier about it.
When she said that southern Europe is where people go for vaccation, that reminded me of a kind of iteresting trend we here in the Nordics have started seeing lately due to the changing climate. A lot of people from the southern parts of Europe have started coming up here for their summer vaccation because the summers are just too damn hot down there, up here, our summers are still warm, but usually, at least to people from the south, more pleasantly warm, not uncomfortably so
As a hater of hot weather, I have been vacationing in the north of Europe or other cooler places since 20 years ago, before it became a trend. And now everyone and their brother are doing the same! Leave the north to meeeee 😂😂😂😂😂😂 greetings from Italy 😜 (also, not related, I have been interested in Japan and its culture since high school in the 1990s, lived there, speak the language, work for a Japanese company since year 2000 etc... Now it's become so trendy it's impossible to find cheap flights anymore. Why is everyone copying my travel preferences?? 😂)
@@sabrinasambo7570 i always go to austria, for almost 40 years now, and i've only had temps 'to hot' once. Since ur in italy, go to the mountains, its nice and cool there ;)
As an American, YES we are louder in general! It takes a while to adjust but we need to do it. When you have changed your volume level you will be surprised how obnoxious it is to have to listen to someone else's life from ten tables away.
Dear god yes. It's not just the volume, which genuinely IS louder and will grab your attention because of that, it's the second-hand embarrassment of hearing people having a private conversation like they're on a theatre stage. What really strikes us about hearing a bunch of loud Americans isn't the literal volume so much as how they seemingly have no issues broadcasting - to the point of imposing it on others - things that I would be cringing if I said them lowkey and realised I'd been overheard. Not because they're bad, or inappropriate, just because they are my private life. There are other cultures that have people scream-talk in public (sometimes much worse than Americans) and Europeans still think it's disrespectful and undignified when tourists or immigrants do that, but it doesn't feel as unbelievable in a way, because they speak in their own language so the "why would you let us know that" element isn't there.
Americans aren't alone. Even within Europe you'll find some country's where the people are louder or more open and enthusiastic than others. For example the Dutch or the Italians who are more expressive with there body language. And like it's said in the video. It's how you as a person adapt yourself in a certain situation and place and be mindful of the persons in the near proximity
@@JensVerboven Americans or US citizens? You have North America, Central America and South America, the continent America. The LATINOS are also AMERICANS.
@@dianaschwengle-croes3073 I was reacting on a comment of Stenhard, who I presume is a US citizen:) as he describes himself as an American, I'm not sure. But you right, American is a terminology for the inhabitants of both continents (Nord and south America). And I feel people use this more to describe a US citizen then they do when describing a mexican, Canadian or a Brazilian person for example.
Hah kinda shame when she makes video about Europe but does such mistake 😵💫 research is good even if you believe that you know it well. Also reasoning on currency is kinda funny
11:11 Basically when the borders were drawn, the occupants of the houses got to choose wether they wanted to live in Belgie or Nederlands, so it could vary between neighbours, even in row houses.
15:00 She's actually incorrect here. It is actually the flag of Europe. The Council of Europe (with 46 member countries today) adopted it as the flag of Europe all the way back in the 1950s. EU only started using it as their flag as well decades later. Calling it the Flag of Europe is definitely still correct, even though many associate it with EU today.
You mean the 'Council of Europe', not the 'European Council' which is an EU institute. Names are close, organizations not. Original post has been corrected. Confusion often happens.
People avoid to admit that more and more western europeans are moving in east. They prefer to live in countries like Greece, Croatia or Romania (even Hungary for those who like the current political trend) due to lower prices, lower criminality index and of course due to the fact that those countries are really beautiful(especially Greece and Croatia). The difference between West and East becomes lower and lower every year. Romania(latin, not slavic, btw), for example, has the fastest economical growth in Europe in the last 15 years which is mind-boggling. Lived in Germany, Greece and now Romania and I can confirm that the trend is perfectly understandable.
From my limited contacts with American tourists I can confirm that yes you are talkative and loud. My last involuntary interaction was three months ago in a restaurant in a small village next to a Polish shore. I was waiting with my husband for our meal and I HAD TO listen to the conversation between two Americans and a Polish guy (whom I could barely hear). Within those 60 minutes I learned almost everything about their business career.
I used to be a waiter at a restaurant near a famous Golf club which attracts many European tourists. What I learned there was that most Americans aren't loud(except for certain areas) but that groups are loud, even European, and especially those who are on a vacation/holiday. A single Irishman is quiet as a mouse until he is joined by 4 of his buddies.
I was on a train ride yesterday and there was a group of Americans sitting behind me. They were so loud while nobody else on the train was speaking, I also ended up learning everything about their lives lol
The weirdly divided town(s) of Baarle-Hertog (BE)/Baarle-Nassau (NL) is an interesting thing to look into. It's not just divided in two parts. It's an entire patchwork of borders throughout the area. And that's not the only weird border thing we Belgians have going..... there's also the VennBahn area (which even most Belgians don't know about), which includes (among others) one German enclave, consisting of one house and garden.
Baarle Hertog is in the Netherlands but it is belgium. It is not even on the border of Belgium and the Netherlands . It is in de province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.
Channel always exciting to watch; I don't learn much about Europe but, implicitly, a lot about the United States; plus he's so friendly! France is curious, it is both from the South and the North, Italy can be very cold (the climate as well as the people) and the same for Spain. France is Catholic and Protestant, but with a marked Jewish influence for those who look a little. Italy is less and less Catholic and its Catholicism is more joyful and relaxed than that of Spain. Germans in Bavaria are often friendly and open, Poles are Germans who speak "Russian". France, Italy, and Spain have great differences between their North and South; and so on. It is difficult to segment Europe!
@@SirAdrian87 short version: A series of landexchanges during feudal times (starting at about the year 1190). But because some fields were already in use or promised to others, those areas weren't included in the trade, leading to a patchwork of independantly owned pieces of land. As those areas in later years got put together through gifts, inheritances, and such, it got even more complicated. This led to a host of problems and attempts to rectify the situation all the way up until 1996 (with the creation of "werkgroup Baarle", which regulates the cooporation of both countries in this area). For instance, in world war 1, where Belgium was occupied territory, but the Netherlands weren't the German occupier couldn't reach the Belgian enclaves without violating the neutrality of the Netherlands. Smuggling and resistance operations of the Belgians in those enclaves ran rampant during those years.
America is bigger in size than Europe???? I can only assume she's confusing Europe with the EU. Europe is 10.53 million km², The USA is 9.83 million km². Also, when did the US lose Alaska? Who's got it now? I bet it's the Dutch.
Well, America is a lot bigger than Europe. Canada, the USA and Brazil each are almost as big as Europe. America has more than 42 million square kilometres or about 4 times the land area of Europe.
I think whats most missing from her video regarding safety, is that Europe have mostly better more strict gun control, and generally less guns than USa. In many countries there was never a school schooting , or mass schooting due to more restriction regarding owning a gun.
So now they use knives, vehicles and a nice variety of home made bombs instead of guns. And let's not forget, the average civilians may not have their guns anymore, but the criminals still do.
No such attack in hiostory of my country ( Poland) , do you have any data about other countries confirming that number of school attacks witch "alternative weapons" are in any way similiar to gun school attacks in USA ? Doubt it
About Swedens crime problem. We really do have a problem, but mainly that crimes have started to take other forms than they used to have. We have gang-related crimes in a way that was not so common twenty years ago. Violent crimes that have been noticed in news often are gang-war shootings or bombings (not always to kill someone, just to scare or as a threat). What is very bad is that the gangs have started to recruit really young teens to do very violent crimes - gang murders done by 15 year olds with no crime records. Our problem have started to move to our neighbors Denmark and Norway too, with young kids sent over the border to shoot someone.
This is weird to hear, i mean i am not that far away (Latvia) but i always figured, if for some inexplicable reason i'd be forced out of my own country, i'd rush to Sweden because i always assumed you lot just have really nice disposition, as in kind people, wooly cows, snowy mountains and a lot of small villages with wooden cottages....but gang wars, that just honestly sounds unbelievable...
@Bastacat It's weird for us too. But it has been increasing over the years. Mainly it's violence among criminals but things spread and totally innocent bystanders can be hurt or killed. Especially when there are "gangsters" that are kids themselves, high on adrenaline, and puberty hormones. I'm not fearful when I move around in the city, though, but I would be a bit more cautious in some areas and some times.
Two steps smarter Americans know not only it’s more than Germany, France and Italy, they know that in the south-west of Europe there’s a peninsula where they speak Mexican ;)
15:11 It is the Europe flag, it was designed by the Council of Europe as their flag and as the flag for Europe. Eu adopted it in 1985, with permission from the Council of Europe. So it is both the flag of Europe and the flag of EU.
Yes, was about to comment the same. The Council of Europe has nothing to do with the EU and uses both the flag and the anthem (or as you wrote, is even the initiator to use them for europe stuff in first place). Almost every european country (e.g. except Russia [was part, but war and so on], Belarus) are part of it; also some eurasian countries like Turkey, Georgia are participants. So for all these countries it is totally eligable to use the european flag and therefore for europe as a whole since the ones not taking part are neglectable here imo.
I dont agree. In Europe has 17 European countries who dont belong to EU organisation and even us club members have our own individual flags, hymns and independent days we celebrate and history. EU has no part in them and nothing to do with our long histories. It is also disturbing that EU gives us now rules which dont necesserily align with every country because there is no similarities with Romania and Norway. Whats good in one country is not necessarily good in other. EU flag is EU organisation flag, not European flag. Those European countries who dont belong to EU club are as much European as those who does not. European countries are old, deep rooted in history. They existed thousands years before EU and will exist after.
@@susanna8612 The "EU flag" is not a "EU flag". It is a flag introduced by the council of europe, that is not an eu institution. almost every european country (46 of [46 to 50]) is part of that council; so it really IS the european flag, not only EU.
@theoremofnik 27 countries out of 44 European countries is part of EU. And before early 2000's when euro was also formed and EU became the "thing" we were not even aware of that flag. Its not our identity and Europe is not Unated States of America but continent of 44 independent countries with own national flags.
If anyone is interested, Gaelic Scottish is a language but hardly anyone speaks it, most people in Scotland just speak English. And yea if you start down south and travel to Wales, Ireland and up north the accent changes dramatically, also British counties are like US states
I'm from Czechia and I can say, if some non-European would say "Czech Republic is Eastern Europe" I would be happy, that they at least know where Czech Republic is. However, at 17:12 it says Polish money, but those are Czech crowns, not Polish Zloty.
Czech republic is seen as eastern by some people still, due to the former iron curtain. But in reality, Prague is further west than Vienna or Salzburg.
@@mick-berry5331 Eastern Europe is basically Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova. Cross these countries' borders into the EU and you'll be in a totally different universe economically, socially and culturally. Eastern bloc was what shaped the Eastern Europe term decades ago. It's been totally irrelevant for a long time now.
Around 11:00, the lady's talking about Baarle-Hertog (BE)/Baarle-Nassau (NL). The reasons for this absolute weirdness of a border are historical, and I'm sure you'll be able to find several videos that go into the hows and whys of the situation, as well as the administrative silliness that comes with it. for example: the place/country where your front door is determines where your taxes go to.
During covid this got very confusing when Belgium was in lock down but the Netherlands wasn't. Some shops being in both countries had to close off certain sections because those were in Belgium, whereas the parts that were in the Netherlands could remain open.
Hi there, Good content... more people in the west need to see it... I am a Canadian Expat that has lived internationally for 26 years... currently in Tbilisi Georgia (former soviet republic NOT the state in US)... and the world is amazing... so much to experience and learn and some great people everywhere. Again great job on your video.
fun fact about UK soccer international team(s) - in Olympics, UK attends as 1 country - in FIFA World Cup, they attend as 4 countries - in UEFA Euro, they attend as 4 countries
@vladimirmoravek6749 5 days ago (edited) fun fact about UK soccer international team(s) - in Olympics, UK attends as 1 country.......... Not exactly. If they qualify ( and only England is good enough to ) then the IOC make the UK enter as Team GB. They wont let the four countries enter individually , and there is no ' UK ' football team. The problem is , if the IOC say that they have to enter as the UK , then Fifa and Uefa might do the same. Which would mean no players from the three other countries would get into the UK team, as it would be full of English players only. Thats one of the reasons why we ignore the Olympics as a ' top ' level competition. IOC only let 4 European teams in? Really ? When 20 of the top 30 football teams are European?
@@richard6440 Actually that's not quite true. No British country even take part in the qualification process, so the only way they could qualify is if they are to host the Olympics (which is what happened in 2012). THe reason for this is that the four Associations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) have individual places at the FIFA and UEFA top tables. If they were to compete as Team GB at Olympics, this would be undermined. It took a lot of politicking to even allow a TeamGB to happen in the 2012 Olympics. Also notice it was TeamGB.. not Team UK... so it didn't technically include Northern Ireland (we should call it Team UK..)
Where I grew up in Yorkshire, the accent changed very slightly from village to village. In some cases we could identify which street. This was useful for identifying ‘outsiders’ 😄 People now move around more so you can’t really do that any longer.
Belgica is Latin for Netherlands, the New Netherlands colony in North America was called Nova Belgica on maps in Latin. Even Dutch gold and silver coins say: confederation of Belgian provinces.
@@dutchman7623 This is completely incorrect, Belgae was a thing before Belgica and it has nothing to do with Netherlands. It comes from proto-Germanic/Indo-European basically meaning to swell with anger or battle fury. During that same time period The Netherlands was called Germania Inferior and Batavia meaning good island because of the fertile ground.
Just discovered your channel through this video. It is very refreshing to see someone that open minded and eager to learn about other parts of the world. All the best Sir!
Regarding the languages - I'm from Slovakia, so I obviously speak Slovak. I come from a mixed Slovak/Hungarian family and I live near the Hungarian border so I speak fluent Hungarian too. Slovakia used to be part of Czechoslovakia and the Czech and Slovak languages are quite similar, therefore I also speak Czech (a lot of Slovakians do). I learned some English in school and got more proficient in it because I used it a lot at work. So, yes it is quite common for Europeans to speak more languages.
Swedes learn English from an early age in school, but it's the only mandatory language apart from Swedish. You can take French, Spanish or German as a second language later, but it's not mandatory and you can take electronics or programming (for instance) instead.
at 11:40 she is wrong, Europe is bigger than the US, the EU(European Union) is smaller than the US search for the most beautiful McD in the world, Budapest Nyugati(Westend) Trainstation should be one of the first
Not by much, but yes... Europe’s land area is about 3.9 million square miles, approximately 5% larger than the U.S., which has a land area of about 3.7 million square miles.
And the European part of Russia alone is as large as the area from Portugal to Germany, another reason why lumping a bunch of countries together with it as Eastern Europe makes little sense. The French get upset if you say that someone from Normandy is the same as someone from Burgundy and yet they'd handwave away half of the continent as "the same"
@@barkasz6066 And yet, somehow russia isn't part of Europe no matter what geography tells you. Russia is just a civilizational failure at most levels and nothing more than a giant societal abomination for the last 1500 years to begin with...
Damn, massive respect for trying to break the american stereotype! I'm amazed to see an american who actually knows more about central europe than me. Probably. Much love ❤
The belief is based on a stereotype. You cannot generalize people, as that is a mindset typical of small-minded individuals. When considering factors like income and education, Americans are as knowledgeable as Europeans. Just as there are foolish people wherever you are from, there are also foolish people in the United States. Given the size of the U.S. and its large population, the likelihood of encountering such individuals is greater. This stereotype makes it easier for people to highlight and spread any "dumb" remark or action from an American, which they might not do if the person were from a different country.
There is a significant hypocrisy rooted in the European sense of superiority and anti-American sentiment. Many Europeans are just as uninformed about Africa and Asia as they claim Americans are about the wider world. However, this inconsistency is rarely acknowledged or discussed. The focus tends to be solely on how much Americans know about Europe, or shall I say don't know...
@@Kenny-yl9pc We (in Europe) know an awful lot about Asian or African (or South-American, for that matter) countries. We actually have school subjects that teach us about these things.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 Rien que dans la vidéo les américains pensent que la Russie est en Europe alors quelle est sur le continent Asiatique 🤣ça part mal
hi nice video man! i'm from belgium and to explain a little about houses on the border with the netherlands... some houses have like 2 mailboxes with 2 different adresses, 1 for each country (:( usually there are not much complications but during the 2020 pandemic it was chaos
Regarding loud Americans....😛 During my years working on cruise ships, the crews onboard did talk about this fact. And there was one trend that stood out. And that was which age group of Americans were the loudest and braggiest. And this was from the age of late 50s and upwards, and especially if they operated in groups with more than 2 ppl in it. These groups you could hear a long way away 😊 Younger Americans tended to be more quiet. Also, on these cruise ships that were all in the 5 Star ++ category with equally high quality food served, only Americans would go ashore to a McDonalds or Burger King joint to by "food" and bring with them back onboard. I really do enjoy your videos Ian, keep 'em coming !! Best regards form Norway
@@mick-berry5331 It makes sense tho, younger folks most likely get introduced to EU through internet, so even when it's their first time visiting, in some ways they are already somewhat ''cultured'' Older people most likely have this assumption that if they are loud enough while visiting a country they couldn't point out on a map to save a life, everyone might just assume that they are ''regulars'' when in fact they haven't got a clue where they are about to land. It's a way to cope with anxiety...maybe.
@@Bastacat I don't know, people react in strange ways... I am 67, I visited the Philippines for the first time last year. I wasn't anxious in the least. 🤣
That depends on where you put the european border. For example would you count the caucasian republics? And that little bit of kasachstan? And how far into russia? And do you count eastern trace (so the part of turkey where istanbul is)? And greenland?
@lorkantheone2350 it's in north America, we are talking about geography, but it's closer to Europe and govern as autonomous region under Denmark. Don't want to be rude but you can search it in 10s on Wikipedia ✌️ * A mean culturally closer
The problem with eastern Europe is that it is a historical term from the Cold War era. Back then, the Europe was divided into just western and eastern (although some countries, notably Finland and Yugoslavia, are somewhat hard to categorize). Right now, I do the division as follows: northern Europe: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania western Europe: Ireland, United Kingdom, France (and Monaco), Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands southern Europe: Portugal, Spain, Italy (and Malta, Vatican, San Marino), Greece central Europe: Germany, Switzerland (and Liechtenstein), Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia southeastern Europe: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova Some countries, such as Slovenia, Switzerland, Moldova or Albania, could be considered transitional.
Fun fact: geographically, Romania is part of central Europe, because Europe stretches to the Ural mountains. So it is the center of Europe and not the southeastern edge. And one more thing, the Balkan mountains do not pass north of the Danube, so it is not a Balkan country either.
Finland is geographically eastern Europe, but thats it. Finland should always be classed as Western European when talking about West vs East, because their country is ran like a western country, their culture is like sweden, their history is mostly swedish - and Finland never was part of USSR (soviet). So Finland should always be categorized as Western when talking politics.
... Nah, I'd say that Eastern for pretty much all the Slavic countries still applies and I - as a Czech don't see the issue or need to change it to anything else. Feels a bit pointless.
In Finland we have free opening hours for business. So basicly almost anything can be open 24/7. Who ever runs the shop can deside how to keep butique opened. But there is restrictions for some items that are sold like alcohol. In shops you can buy alcohon between 9am to 9 pm. Baars and restaurants can sell alcohol for 4am. Not sure about pharmaceutical products, but most of those closes quite early like 8pm, but i know for sure that some are open until midnight. Some times it is hard to get any service after you´ve got your food in restaurant. They don´t push you to order more what you´ve ordered already. They might ask do you want dessert, but not all the places. We started to learn second language at third grade. We had to choose from Swedish or English. We could took other language as well. Those options were French, German, Spanish or Russian. I actually tought that redhead would have some Scott or Irish heritage. So not surpricing about the heritage.
When I grew up in The Netherlands as a kid we started learning English when I was around 9 years old. And when I went to high school (12y old) we also needed to learn German and French. And Spanish was optional. And kids that were at a higher level in highschool also had Latin and/or Greek. I'm living in Sweden now and my kids learn English from age 7.
@@Yinyara Actually we had to choose second foreing language at seventh grade too. I started to learn Swedish first and English later. I actually were pretty good in English already becouse all the games and most of the movies were English. I basicly never need Swedish in Finland or it is very rare so it is harder to speak when you would need it. Just easier to talk English whit the Swedes.
@@ArchieArpeggio Haha yeah, almost everyone in Sweden can talk pretty good English, when I try to talk Swedish and they notice I'm not that great at talking Swedish, everyone automatically switches to English. So even in Sweden it's hard to get to talk in Swedish as a foreigner 😉
The baltic countries are situated around the baltic sea...that's how we differentiate them from the balkan and slavs....it may seem not that different for others...but they r really different culturally,geographically,mentality and history....
Also I want to point out and mention a story, when it comes to language barriers and speaking your own language in a different country, cause people think its only americans or brits that go to another country and speak english expecting people to know it but its not the case. Around 10 years ago I was volunteering at a hostel in Las Vegas as a receptionist, I as a Maltese, speak Maltese and English. Was working, and alot of the times we had people from different countries visiting Vegas. One time we had a big group of Italians come to visit, one of the group members came to check themselves in for the rest of the group, and he asked me in Italian (I know very few words and phrases in Italian so I understood this) "Do you speak Italian?", I looked at him said "No, do you speak Maltese?" (in English of course) he looked at me confused and said No. I said "well that's where I am from, and since you don't we will just stick with English"
Brits don't go to other countries expecting them to speak English That's an ignorant misconception. They will speak English (or try a very basic phrase in that country's language if they only need a basic answer) until they find out the other person doesn't and will pull out the phrase book. There's no expectation just trying to make things simpler. I bet when you go to a foreign country you speak English to them.
@@Gambit771 as a person from a foreign country with alot of English people visiting, yes they do. Though they do attempt to ask how things are said in Maltese, and i did also say "cause people think its only americans or brits" i didnt say I think that. But way to jump the gun on your reply there buddy
To be fair, if there's a place where could be easy to find multilingual people, is in the reception of a hotel in a touristic city. You can find here in Spain a lot of hotels with multilingual people at the reception desk. And I mean multilingual, as in speaking the basics of at least Spanish, English, Chinese, French, German Italian, and maybe some Russian or Arabic to accomodate guests. I am not telling that every employee is fluent in all of them, but you can take for granted that they can manage 4 or 5. There are tourism schools and university degrees (in plural), and it's the basics of it.
@@frajatheone9264 I think that depends on the chain of hotel, the country and the city. This was a hostel, and I was only volunteering there for 3 months, as was most people volunteering there. Anywhere I have been at least so far its usually English and the language of the country, maybe 1 other language. The most hotels I can think of where the front desks would be that multilingual would be like the hilton, or most hotels in Dubai.
About the languages, In Spain we have regional languages (Catalán, Valenciano, Gallego, Bable, Euskera) apart of the oficial for the estate (Spanish) and also applies that in the schools you can learn the neighbours languages(French but optional) and English as part of the scholar curriculum. So for my case I have same amount of classes for Valenciano, Spanish and English and I can opt to study French as optional.
As a galician I hated that I had two years of french instead of portuguese, living half an hour from Portugal. We had to learn galician, spanish, english and french (french only for two years)
_In Spain we have regional languages (Catalán, Valenciano, Gallego, Bable, Euskera) apart of the oficial for the estate (Spanish)_ To be precise, the *official* languages are: Spanish, Catalan/Valencian, Galician, Basque and Aranese Occitan. Apart from that, there are regional languages: Amazigh, Ceutan, Aragonese, Asturleonese, ...
@@MrFiver1111 Please, never hate to learn something and add it to your cultural background. I have study french for many years and I'm very grateful for that.
Austria started to have some shops that are open even on sundays - but working on Sunday/Holidays is paid by twice the usual pay, that also extents to working past 8 p.m. - there are some contractual clauses about this and expections (like certain shift contracts, tourism and hospitals), but this applies to at least 80 % of normal jobs.
I'm growing fond of your reactions :) Keep them coming :) I am Ukrainian. I speak Ukrainian as a native language. I learned Russian in school, because lots of kids spoke it. I had Russian as a school discipline only for 2 years. I learned English at school, and it was mandatory. And I had an option to learn German French or Spanish at school as a second language. I chose French, but i already forgot almost everything. And I did learn some of German as an adult for fun (I would say A2 level, not higher).
I am bad at languages, so avoided them as much as possible. Got Dutch, English, French and German. Didn't do any classical like Latin or Greek, had to learn some of them though at Catholic Church... Mea culpa...
Also ukrainian. But from the western part of the country. We did not have russian in school. But most people can speak the language. Also I'm half hungarian. So I can also speak it. And English we learned in school. So it's 3 just by existing )
In Poland, you learn at least two foreign languages in schools, starting seriously from the 4th grade of primary school with English, which you then have to pass in the final exam in high school if you want to continue studying at university level. And in studies, all students must obtain at least a B2 foreign language certificate if they want to complete at least a bachelor's degree. The youngest of my daughters is in her first year of university studies (Iberian studies), she has C1 in both English and Spanish, and she is also planning to take up Portuguese :) However, my middle daughter, in addition to English, has also obtained a certificate in sign language, as another foreign language ( universities provide such opportunities). You can live with Sundays when most shops are closed. Especially since Saturday is also a day off from work, and shops are open even until very late. In addition, we have chains of small stores, the most popular of which is "Żabka" (something similar to 7/11, but with a much larger selection of goods) - and they, like cinemas, theaters, amusement parks, swimming pools or bars and restaurants, operate in Sunday. Generally, a small business can be open on Sunday, it depends on the owner and the restrictions are not great. However, if you want to buy clothes in a large chain or a car on Sunday - well, no, you won't.
In parts of the UK Celtic languages still exist (Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Cornish) in addition to the Germanic language English, but some of them only have very few speakers left. Breton is a Celtic language that still is spoken by some in Brittany, France. There are other countries with somewhat "obscure" minority languages, in Germany you have the Slavic language Sorbian as well as Frisian and Romani, a Indo-Aryan language with a presence in quite a few countries, in Italy there are Ladin and Friulian as well as Sardinian and there's Romansh in Switzerland, for example.
@Raider_MXD Just in Norway, there's more than just Norwegian spoken. We have 2 different types of Norwegian taught: Nynorsk (New Norwegian) and Bokmål (Book Language). Nynorsk is the purest form of Norwegian, as it was gathered from the different dialects of coastal Norway, but it has a waining use at about 17%. Bokmål is the hybrid language of Norwegian and Danish used in Oslo and other urban areas, and they have the most use now. Then there's the Sami languages of the indigenous Sami people in Norway, where I know about 4 types, but that's about all I know about them.
In Italy there are Arbëreshë, Molisean Croats, Catalans and in the north Italy Slovenes, Germanic communities (South Tyrol, Veneto, Friuli) and FrancoProveçales in Valle d'Aosta.
Very nice reaction! :) @Diferences: I am from the most western State of Austria. Our culture is very different from the rest of Austria, more like Switzerland and SouthWestern Germany. In my Valley even the smallest village has a slightly different dialect than its neighbours and they dialect, culture and history is different than the next valley... But luckily the rivalry between the villages and valleys is noticeably smaller than before.
Nobody in central Europe likes to be call Eastern Europe because for some (namely Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary) association with proper Eastern Europe a.k.a Russia was by force and lasted only 40 years (for Poland about 200 years more). 40 years that somehow magically wiped out 1500 years of shared history and culture with Europe west of Carpathian mountains. There was very sparse contact with Europeans east of those mountains because those vast grass planes were occupied by various Asian nomads who weren't exactly friendly. Imagine if we still called Americas including the USA "the colonies" or everyone west of Bratislava "the Reich". Nonsense.
I don't know about nobody, because I'm Czech and I'm fine with it. I mean, isn't German like Western/Central Europe? Should people wish to avoid being called either of those because of the bad history with Germany? And let's not forget Western Europe includes the UK and you'd have to have lived under a rock to not know at least some of the things the Brits were historically guilty of.
Nah, I'm Polish and idgaf. Some people here seem ashamed to be put in the same category as Ukraine or Bulgaria, but really, we're loser to them geographically, culturally, economically than we are to Germany or Switzerland. I don't think our history with Russia should define the region either way - denying being Eastern European because of Russia is just as silly as lumping us together as the same thing (I barely even consider Russia an European country anyway tbh).
Dude, your videos are great! As a son of turkish immigrants, born and raised in Germany, I would like to add: There is a very unique history of migration in Europe after the destruction caused by the WWs. Workers invited to rebuilt e.g. Germany as a consequence settled here. So many different ethnic communities formed unique new identities in their countries. Many of us do not consider ourselves Germans nor Turks per se, because neither of those labels really fit. This phenomenon created many unique food variations, music and other cultural synergies all over Europe. If not the root cause of this, the effects can be compared to Mexican Americans in the US. It is also the root of many socio-political issues here. Don't mean to get too deep, but I thought, this might be interesting to you. Cheers, keep it up!
As far as I can see there are at least 2 youtubers who are fairly knowledgeable of Europe, that's you and Charlie Vest. So you guys are in my favour as you both are willing to get to know what and how in Europe. As a Dutch person I thank you ( both )
11:46 Yup, I bet 98% of Americans would be surprised to find out that they're only 5% of the Earth's population. I saw an American in a comment section saying that the UK science based spaceflight & cosmology channel, Astrum, should switch from SI units to "American standard" imperial measurements because "most people on the internet are American"! When I asked why 95% of the Earth's population should conform to the 5% who are stuck in the 19th century when it comes to metrology, he just went quiet.
I am born in England. Lived in Greece for years. My heritage is Egypt and Israel. My lady is half Greek, my daughter-in-law is from Mexico. I have you all beaten when it comes to food..... But bloody hell, I'm on a diet at the moment.
Here in Australia I have neighbours who are a Greek family with one Filipina daughter-in-law and they run a small chain of pizza shops where the house speciality is Tandoori pizza. Personally, if I'm trying to cut back on sugars and fats and carbs in my food, I just add more spices. All the flavour, no extra calories!
About the nap in the middle of the day, it has to do with the weather as you said. At those hours it was so hot that it was dangerous to work on the fields, so they just slept until it was a bit colder.
17:50 - If you wanna easy convert PLN into US.Dollar or Euro just multiply by 4 and other way around if you wanna know how much you will get PLN from US.Dollar or Euro 1 Euro/Dollar = ~4 PLN 1 PLN = ~0.25 Euro/Dollar Of course it may be different from what I typed but it's x4 anyway with cents of difference because there is that thing called current exchange rate but it's pretty much same
That's funny to hear from an Australia perspective. Australias land mass is very similar to the US and we have 26 million compared to 335 million people in the US. Obviously alot of Australia is unihabitable.
@@Mike...01 Australia is one of the oldest continents! And inhabited for a long time too. Give it time and it will be paradise again. Isn't it going towards Mexico?
Many European states are new countries Italy /or Germany for example /the UK is a new country just like America people either don't know this or choose to ignore it for political reasons .
A funny thing is that even though Switzerland is considered part of Central Europe, we are way more of a wine country than a beer country. We make some great wines but we're not famous for it like France or Italy because nearly all of our production is consumed locally and very little is exported but in terms of quality I'd say we're pretty on par with the greats.
I don't know enough about Switzerland's history, but is that just now or historical as well? Being an alpine climate I expect farming would be more oriented towards fruits than grains, making wines and spirits more easily made by the average citizen, but I could also imagine that ciders and meads were more popular historically with the switch to wine happening in the 20th century as Switzerland's strong economy and small population led to a very high GDP per capita.
@cmlemmus494 I'm not sure but iirc the Romans brought grapes with them when their empire was here. In my canton at least the more cultivated fruits are grapes (for wine mainly), apricots and apples. In my canton we also have plenty of rye and some rye bread like nordic countries.
I can confirm some Americans are loud in Europe! Have this one instance where my girlfriend was on the train and an Amarican was really talkative almost yelling out in the train, and funny part is she hears him talk louder than the music in her headphones, saying that "I don't care if people think I'm loud, they are all bottled up and reserved, they should learn from us Americans", all while my girlfriend and a bunch other people was just trying to have a calm 5 hour train ride, instead it was 5 hours listening to him.. (maybe a testament to how reserved we are also)
The thing is that not only European countries are usually quite close to each other because they are usually smaller in size than big world countries, like say, Canada, Brazil or China. But since Europe itself is just a part of Afro-Eurasia, it means that we also can be quite close to other continents, to places part of another civilisation : the arabo-muslim world Many people tend to not realize that north Africa and the near east are close to Europe. Often, it can be closer to many other European countries. Where I live (and it is in the north half of France), I am closer to Algiers in Algeria than to, say, Varsovia in Poland. From my town Going to Moscow is as far (or as close) as going to the heart of Sahara desert. From the mediterranean coast of France, north Africa is much closer than London or Berlin. From Spain, just 10 miles separates Europe from north Africa. I was last week a vacation in Southern Spain and did cross the gibraltar detroit and spent a day in Morrocco and come back the same day. It is quite incredible to completly change continent and civilisation and religion by just crossing a piece of sea 10 miles wide for a few hours. Such contrast can be done in very few places.
@@martinwebb1681 There are stories from older Dutch lorrydrivers telling they went as far as Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. Can you imagine in the current world, crossing Iran in a lorry from the west? Hell, there even was a London - Calcutta Bus-service in the 50ies, 60ies and 70ies.
@@railion6513 ... Yes, same here in the UK, back in the 1960s and 1970s British trucking companies would travel all across the Middle East and to Pakistan, Afghanistan etc, etc, Also in the 1970s Iranian lorries were a regular sight in London but since the 1970s there have been none.
I confirm that in Italy every shop and supermarket have been open during Sundays for about 20 years... Before, when I was a kid, they were open during sundays only in December, for the "shopping/presents season". Honestly, the fact that now shops and malls are open on Sundays, I consider it a DISGRACE.
For someone European teaching Americans not to assume things about Europe and get it wrong she managed to do that quite a lot herself. Of course this is light hearted and a bit of fun, but it's better to get facts correct anyway... Some people might actually believe all of it. This is just her perception, as ONE European/Latvian (or whatever Baltic country she was from, I forget). Kind of funny though, but with a pinch of salt. Others have written some of her more obvious mistakes. 😉
21:32 you can not necessarily chose. Most Dutch schools offer and obligate English, German and French. There is a schooltype called gymnasium and they add Latin and ancient Greek as extra languages. Sometimes you can chose Spanish instead, frisian is an option in Friesland but although there are schools offering other options, it is not common.
Just wanted to point out that what was shown as "Poland" currency is actually Czech. But hey, she made so many other errors this one is just an icing on the cake XD
Grocery stores in Italy are almost always closed as well on Sunday. No idea why that one is green! 😅 There are some major supermarkets tat are open till 12 P.M. to be fair, but that's more of an exception than the rule and it does not apply to any normal store I know outside of major cities like Milano or Rome - but that would be true in any country in the EU.
@@MrFiver1111 yes! I was in italy this summer. I loved the places and the weather, but most of the people were a bit too loud and outgoing for me as an introverted Norwegian 😅
Greeks when they're among friends or family... omg, can they be loud. Sometimes so much so that it sounds like fighting to me. Every single time I spent a longer time in Greece (so, not in a holiday apartment or hotel, but a regular home: I was a freelance journalist and editor, so just took my laptop and stayed for 2-3mths) I needed to seriously acclimatise. Or better said: my ears needed to. In the beginning, it always felt like too much, and that's coming from a Dutch person - we're considered among the louder ones in Western Europe 😅. To my utmost surprise, they were actually aware of it, them being loud AF, and when it got too bad (as in: I couldn't sleep) I was allowed to say something and they would tone it down. It most likely helped that I speak Greek. During the ypno (siesta), it was considered very bad form to play music or to 'yell'. While it's done less and less in Greece, particularly in the bigger cities, I usually lived in Crete, where naps are still quite common. Interrupting a nap from someone who needs to work soon again till 11pm or later by being loud or revving a scooter unnecessarily can even get you barred from the specific street (usually the scooters). And trust me: the pappous living at the start of said street would take out a chair and some watered down ouzo/raki to sit in front of his house for a couple of hours, hawk eyes on all corners, to check if you were 'good people' or not. Introducing myself, after arriving, to said 'neighbourhood watch' and then immediately being called a "kalo paidi" always made me start my stay with a smile. (Crap, now I'm homesick!)
11:23 Baarle Hertog ( Belgium) Baarle Nassau ( netherlands) , you live where your front door is at, that is who you pay tax to. It may seem confusing to outsiders, but this probably the part of Belgium that makes the most sense 😂, historically speaking.
I once was in a discussion with someone who said I probably couldn't name the US states on a map either. And we both did an online test and I had the majority right, and he had more than half wrong.
In addition, the comparison is flawed from the outset when comparing US states with European nations - especially since some of these are also federal nations and have several states themselves.
about euros: while some countries like Czech Republick do not have them as their currency, most big shops WILL accept euros, but at worse rate then in exchange boot. (for exaple 1 euro = 24 Czk in exchange, but in shop its like 1=23. its not big difference)
The blue flag with twelve stars is the both the flag of the Council of Europe and was adopted by the EU later. The Council of Europe is a much broader organization than the EU.
It does seem like what is considered a "normal" speaking volume might be a little louder in the US, but I think the main thing that tends to be noticable to europeans is that in europe there are more contexts in which we will actively turn our volume down in public, such as if we're queueing, waiting for a show to start, in a less crowded restaurant, etc, to the point where people nearby wont necessarily overhear what we're saying unless they specifically focus their attention on us, whereas it seems more common for anericans to maintain their normal (slightly loud) speaking volume at all times unless explicitly told to be quiet or in a known quiet context like a library
@@ASkhooter I find it interesting, didn’t get exposed to much of this stuff in school and certainly don’t in any mainstream media. I’m equally interested in my own country by the way, it’s just I’ve had decades of learning about it.. and having everything about it constantly presented to me in every form naturally
At 22:27 min.: In The Netherlands the shops are open on sunday, however, Sunday is still considered a traditional resting day insofar as that you are not allowed to make construction noises, with machines and such, be it either professionally or DIY. It's a blessing, but still, some people don't know this or just ignore this prohibition, claiming ignorance in the matter!
For Finland, the question has several answers. Geographically, Finland is not Scandinavian, but culturally it is partly. It still has ties to Sweden and was colonized by them from the 13th to the 19th century. There is a Swedish-speaking minority and it is estimated that about 40% of Finns speak Swedish. If you visit both countries, you will see many similarities in attitudes, physical appearance, eating habits, etc. The nobility of Swedish origin is discreet but still influential in Finland.
Well, it was colonised by Swedish settlers in 1100-1350ish, but it technically does NOT count as a colony while part of the Swedish Empire. Colonies specifically have some level of self-governance, separate from the original country, sometimes in the form of a colonial administration. However, Finland was considered part of "Sweden proper" and ruled directly from Stockholm, making it a fully integrated province of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1809.
I live in Western Finland. If I travel 20 minutes south, Finnish sounds different . An hour north east and it is very different. An hour east and different again. An hour north and they speak almost only swedish. Etc...
Im from Scania, southern Sweden. Our accent is called scanian, but in our relatively small region there are several very distinct accents. If you go back in history it would have been many many more, almost every town and village would be identifiable on their accents.
I'm impressed by your knowledge and even more so by your interest in the rest of the world, considering you're from Illinois where you just have America in all directions. Good work! Greetings from Stockholm
For the UK a good example of language and dialect differences is the word for "Bread Roll". There are at least 16 different acceptable terms for it depending on your location and quite often using the wrong one can lead to confusion. For example in West Yorkshire a "Bread Roll" is a "Teacake" however say that in Scotland and the waiter would bring you a biscuit with a marshmallow topping.
In German it's the Word of the Last hard slice at the end of a loaf of bread... It can bei for example Kanten, Knierfte, Knübbele or Randl depending of the Region you live in.
@@geoffpriestley7310 It even depends what part of West Yorkshire - as it does here in East Yorkshire! To me, it's a breadcake (a teacake being like a breadcake but with currants in it!😜), but as a young kid in Suffolk I knew it as a bap? The majority of my own family, my ex-husband and both sides of his family are all Geordies (from Northumberland), but don't ask me what the same thing's called up there these days as whenever I go visit, I still can't understand half of what anybody's saying..!😅
The little rivalries in europe are the best. "In Germany, you arrive on time. In Austria, you arrive… eventually, but with a good story." Everyone has some banter for their neighbours or about the country capital.
Just a curiosity about learning several languages. I am Portuguese, my daughter started learning English at 4 (its optional but i would say 80 to 90% of ppl do it), a second language is mandatory at age 10, normally English (but french might be an option in some schools), at 12 it is mandatory a 3rd language, most commonly french, but could be Spanish or Mandarin (this last is getting very popular nowadays) by default you have English all the way from basic school till university
I am in Ireland, born and raised. We speak English (in my county at least), we learned Irish and I learned French and a little German in secondary school (high school). We got to choose the 3rd language we learned but we HAD to learn a 3rd one (only got to choose what one). German, French and either Italian or Spanish were the most available 3rd languages but it depended on where you went to school. If you went to school in Dublin or maybe Cork or Limerick there may have been other languages to choose from. This was back in the 80's and 90's so there are different choices now and more availability of languages to choose from.
Just be careful not to take what she is saying in that video as gospel. I have watched that video about a year ago and I do not agree with some of the things she said and portraits as facts there. For example, the thing about German is wrong. Everybody in Germany and Austria is able to speak "high German", and even if they speak in dialect we still mostly are able to understand each other just fine. There are a few exceptions, mostly Switzerland and the most-Western state of Austria, their dialects are very difficult to understand. But apart from that it's maybe more comparable to British English vs. American English. They sound different, they may have different words for some of the same things, but overall they understand each other just fine. Regarding the overall language, culture, etc. Bavaria (the south-eastern most state of Germany) is quite close to Austria, even moreso than to the other German states. The AC and heatwave thing is also wrong, many public buildings, public transport, etc. has AC by now and the heatwave may be two weeks in Latvia, but it's sometimes two months in central European countries. Regarding learning languages, it all depends on what the dominant language in your area is. For example, as a German-speaking native the first foreign language we learn is *always* English. You might have to learn other foreign languages down the line in your school career, such as French, for example, but learning a language of an adjacent country is probably only a thing if your language is not a dominant one in your region, i.e. like people in the Netherlands learn German. She is projecting a lot in her video, I think I already mentioned that :D.
Re "........ maybe more comparable to British English vs. American English" that actually would be more accurate if you left it as just "....... maybe more comparable to British English" as whilst we can all read written English the same cannot be said about the spoken language, which varies hugely across the length and breadth of the tiny area of the UK, due to the large number of distinct dialects and accents, whilst we can often get the gist of a conversation the subtleties are completely lost, or people use a different version of English, closer to received pronunciation than their local dialect.
Nope. I have to disagree with you there. Yes, people are able to speak "high german" as the universal german language. But think about the little towns and villages and think about the older generation - two 60+ year olds from idk, Waldshut in Germany (southwest corner with a strong accent bordering swiss) and Emden in East Frisia will VERY likely have some sort of problems understanding eachother when high german for themselves is noticabley a "foreign language". And if they just speak their dialect - no chance at all. I heard once people from "Vogelsberg, Hessen" talk in their dialect and it was almost impossible to understand anything - and I am living only ~300km away. When people really choose to speak "their" dialect and not some high german that is influenced by their regional dialect - you are in for a hard treat. And yes, NOW the heatwaves can be up to 2 months. But 20, 30 years ago 30°C+ was quite rare! You had that a few weeks in August. Most buildings are older than that or built with a different climate model. And no, the first foreign language we learn is NOT always english! I border France, we could choose between English, Latin and French. From grade 5-7 it was french for me, then english, for the ones that had begun with english it was the other way around. The class that chose Latin it was English in grade 7 and French in grade 9. (All at the "Gymnasium", where usually faster learning pupils were sent to). So yes, afaik the border regions of germany can learn their neighbouring countries´ language as a 1st language.
As a German who moved to Austria - it is not always possible to understand the Austrians if they dont make the effort - and I am not talking about Vorarlbergerisch. In Vienna, yes, but even starting from Upper Austria, it starts to become difficult if they talk in dialect. And also, English is not ALWAYS the first foreign langauge you learn. There are enough schools that start with French or Latin.
@@xyincognito I learned in the 90s and even then we started with English in *elementary school* . I have friends with small kids that are going to school now and I have yet to hear about or know anyone who did not have the 2nd language learning at school being English. Not teaching English as the first foreign language in school is irresponsible.
About Sundays, in Portugal restaurants are all open on Sundays. We enjoy eating out, and the weekend is always appealing for that. Usually restaurants will be closed on Mondays for staff rest. Shopping malls and all their stores are open on Sundays, too. What usually closes is small/street commerce and services (these are closed on Saturdays, too).
"Are americans really that loud?" From purely observing all the people around me in public (university/tourist town, so many foreigners) it goes like this (very broadly) Loudest noise imaginable - Black people - Russians - Americans - Southern Europeans - Brits - Eastern Europeans - Asians (not loud, but often talk a lot amongst themselves) - Everyone else - Scandinavians Absolute silence - Balts (they will actively make any place more quiet, unless they are drunk)
I can confirm your list. I am missing Middle East and South American though. I would put Middle East between US and South Europe. South Americans above Brits.
i live in The Hague, which has an unique dutch dialect/accent from the rest of the country. using different words, different expressions, having different names for things. the same is true for most other dutch cities and regions. but even within the city you could tell from what area or even what specific street someone was from, from the words and expressions they used. so it's not weird to me at all that there are so many different languages in the whole continent
I am a proud Yorkshireman and I went to work Dahn Sarth( Down South) and one of my new colleagues was also from Up North, he was a Liverpudlian and you would expect 2 Northerners who were divided geographicaly by about 100 miles to be able to understand each other, but NOOO! my boss had to translate for at least a month as she was also originally from Liverpool and had employed some of my friends previously so had got to grip with my type of Yorkshire dialect (Which is one of at least four distinct types existing from the Shires themselves. i.e. N,S,E and W ). If you drive about 1 hour from York and go into a local pub you would be hard pressed to understand all the different dialects and now more commonly languages you would encounter. Obviously this is also very common in Europe as well.
Also in tiny Denmark there are 80+ dialects ..... and some of them I really dont understand and you tell which town people are from by the way they speak.
Czech here: its not just that we like to be called central europe, we are. That may be the reason😅even when we are not talking about pure geographic, economically and in most ways we are as close to the western countries as to those on east. Plus we dont wanna be included with Russia. But slavic, yes. btw those czech crowns that were mentioned, those are the currency later shown as polish currency. Great channel by the way, smart open minded guy thats cool (especially when from the US🤔)
![American reacts to Posts That Prove American's Think That Only They Exist [part 3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/23r5nlvkqA4/mqdefault.jpg)
About the "you're not Italian" part:
Europeans are generally super happy and welcoming if you tell them you have some distant familial connections from their country. They'll be thrilled to talk to you about their country, language and history and we welcome you if you come to us with a sincere interest. What people don't like is when Americans just blatantly claim to be something they are not, and then go on to speak on behalf of, or in the name of a community they are not actually a part of. It also doesn't help that the things those people say "as someone who's Irish" or "as an Italian" usually range from the utterly ridiculous to the downright offensive.
I'm reminded of Hayley Alexis here on YT coming back to Florida after living a while in Bavaria and then got told by the "Germans" there that don't even speak the language, let alone know anything non-Hollywood about the culture, she can't be German because she's black.
*That* reasoning is 80 years out of date, and Germany wants nothing to do with these posers while people that move here are more than welcome, as long as they put in effort.
If those people had said she can't be German because Bavaria isn't Germany, they would have shown some understanding and we would all have had a good laugh. The same way I am amused by the concept of having "family" over in the US just because some of them tracked back their line to a guy who emigrated in the 19th century I also happen to be related to. At least being family there is technically true.
There are 80 millions of Italians and descendants of Italians around the world.
If they keep their culture and language, they're still Italians.
From the next years, it would be possible for these people to return to Italy if they desire so.
Our Government wants to open the doors on all the Italians without citizenship that wants to return back home. And plans are laid down right now to welcome them back.
We also needs them to rinvigurate the Economy of the country.
I think this comes from the fact America is a nation of immigrants, and that a lot of their states / cities / regions are still largely populated by descendents of immigrants from specific places.
It is functionally useful sometimes for Americans to say to other Americans "I am an Irish American" or whatever, because it says something culturally about their cultural experience. That gets shortened to "I am Irish" pre-internet, because the "American" part is obvious to everyone you're talking to.
Fast forward to a much more integrated planet and people are still saying "Irish" instead of "Irish American" and have also now - erroneously - come to the conclusion that "Irish" in America is the same as "Irish" in Ireland. Which is obviously absurd to a European, but to an American who has grown up in a bubble of people identifying their cultural experiences by describing themselves using a national identity that they don't really have... it's confusing to Americans when we turn around and say "No you're not". Even if it's true.
I think ultimately Americans maybe just need to acknolwedge that the suffix "American" is the important part of their national identity and that being "X-American" is wildly different from being X. It's also becoming less and less useful as a cultural marker in the US, as the states are very much settled into their own cultural identities now, which may owe something to the ancestral roots of the settlers, but are very much their own things at this point.
I find most Europeans are generally quite good at changing their word choice dependent on the people they're speaking to, and Americans are completely incapable of doing it.
@@danielefabbro822very true
@@danielefabbro822 You made up a lot of things, people living for generations in other countries are not Italians. Not only in the USA but also in Brazil and Argentina there are many naturalized descendants of Italians, on the coast of Brazil, like Porto Alegre, there are some old people talking Talian (despite the name, that language is almost identical to Venetian dialect, curious enough, their ancestors were in Brazil probably before the union of Italy, or immediately after, because of the famine), still they are not Italians.
Also, there are no plans to welcome back these descendants of Italians. What we have in our law is "Ius sanguinis", that is a long and difficult procedure to just obtain citizenship (no other commodity is provided by the government). To ask for citizenship they have to provide all documents of birth, marriage, death, of each person in their direct paternal line (some exceptions with maternal line). I think not many have these documents nowadays.
This guy is so nice and respectfull about learning Europe . Good job dude
wholesome vibe
A bit too nice and respectful :D
"Arh its the cold"
No....
Actually...
It is called immigration.
It feels as if he's so careful because he's been terrorized by europeans correcting every single mistake he's made. I mean let's be honest this guy's audience is europeans that hope to see a dumb american so we can feel superior. I mean i'm doing that right now and got disappointed :,(
He knows more about Europe than the average European. 😅
We have a divided town on the border between Poland and Czechia too, it's called Cieszyn. During Covid, there were posters on both sides, saying: "I miss you, Pole" and "I miss you, Czech" in both languages :)
Called Český Těšín in czech :)
faith in humanity restored ... that were great gestures and tell so much about the people in poland and the czech republic.
Greetings from germany.
That's very cute
aaaw that's so wholesome. thanks for sharing this ♡
@@kuliblubber9654 Btw, thanks for the help of the German soldiers during the floods we had in Poland. It is appreciated :)
In Kazakhstan, it is customary to refer to Europe as a "part of the world" rather than as a continent, because Eurasia is the continent, while Asia is a part of the world, as is Europe.
Interesting. Yeah, I always thought it was super stupid that in the West it's standard to call Europe a continent.
In Norway we have a difference between continents and verdensdeler (litterally translated world-parts). But Europe is its own in both, which is kind of weird.
Continents are really not as rigid as one might think. Countries disagree on what continents exist. In the western world Europe and Asia are seperate continents, even though they are literally one land mass
@@thepepchannel7940 We sometimes divide continents not only by connected land mass but also by extreme political and social culture diferences, even adding strong climate diferences.
Some countries belong to European continent (not European Union per se) and are not even connected like the UK for example. So I believe the reason Europe and Asia are considered two different continents, despite being a single landmass, is purely because they have very strong diferences, at the political and cultural level, plus also a few particular unique climate characteristics between the two.
And this division has been established, centuries ago, is nothing new.
In Kazakhstan, do u learn at school that u are part of europe or asia? Or u guys only see as eurasia?
Poland has their own currency (zloty), but the bills in the picture were czech crowns :D
I thought - from playing Kingdome Come - that Czechs had Groschen.
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 Yes, "had" is the right word ... in the times of Kingdom Come ... we have Czech crowns now (and if you include Czechoslovak crowns too, then we have had those for last cca 100 years)
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 that is a very old currency that stopped its use in like 1650, a lot of countries had some form of older currency that were from precious metals like silver back then
@@hardyvonwinterstein5445 Also, historically, there was another currency manufactured and used in the lands of Bohemia - Tollars, does this name ring a bell? :) Germanic merchants from HRE were using this currency in the new world - hence today's name - Dollar
@@kralikdoribunny5615 Before the Euro, a German coin of 10 Pfennige, was called a Groschen. I used to buy candy and peanuts for a Groschen.
We’re Dutch or Polish or French or Italian or whatever because we have our national identities, and traditions, and of course languages. And at the same time we’re all European because we’re sharing so much common culture and values. Way more than most of us are aware of, and certainly more than some ignorant nationalists want to tell us. Different but still familiar. It won’t be exactly the same all over the place (and there’s no need for that) but very often it is pretty similar. Having travelled all over Europe, I found stunning landscapes, rich heritage, interesting food and, most important thing, friendy people everywhere. I really like my home continent.
Exactly. People who confuse patriotism with bigoted nationalism are the cancer that is consuming our societies. Not to mention they're just so easy to exploit and used to sow chaos between the countries, just like what Russian trolls are trying to do.
Same
Same here. I love cycling from Germany into France and enjoying the difference. We also have lots of French people crossing the border to Germany. We enjoy each other's country, but still have our own identity.
@@Korschtal Same sentiment here from France! And at the same time, like the OP said, we're different but still similar. I watched some videos from a German woman who lives in the U.S. and she made some videos about the differences between the U.S. and Germany, and it strucked me how much France and Germany are similar compared to the U.S.
@@acmh7538 When you really dig into their History, you realise people got mixed geneticaly speaking and it's just a giant melting pot. It's very visible at the borders where you really have a cultural mixing between a bunch of countries.
Funny enough, Romania is NOT slavic, is Latin :))) it has more similitudes with Italy, Spain and France. We understand and learn very easily these languages.
It's also in the name "ROMAnia"
DNA say no
@@Janzius1 yeah because of mixing, but language wise
@@Janzius1 Romanians aren't italians, but it's a romance language from when it was part of the roman empire.
Linguistics sure - but culturally and mentally it is still placed firmly in "eastern Europe". The shadow of the Soviet Union spectre is still present in large parts of "eastern europe".
I would love to see your channel evolves into you travelling to different countries in Europe and reacting to the things you see!
9:20 I'm not even from the Baltics but from Germany, but I'd still get mad if you called the Baltics, our EU brethren, "basically Russia"...
Yup, they were, after all, Hitler's favorite death camp guards.
Because you are so anti Russian it's stoopid?? Pirate shultz on his way put and whoever you get in next as Chancellor is going to be a war hawk. You could try a bit of diplomacy instead of sending iron cross tanks east again?
Definitely right, bro (I'm Czech the "central" one 😀 ).
But define Russia.. cause they differ hugely throughout the span of the country.
Also.. in general i am fine with 98% of the Russians. I do have a problem with the economical and political top. But then again.. i am disliking most politicians and the rich having the big companies worldwide.
@@pppetra russia as a country, duuh
7:32 German is spoken in Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, eastern Belgium, South Tyrol (part of Italy), Alsace (part of France), northeastern Lorraine (part of France) and northern Schleswig (part of Denmark).
also some parts of Czechia, Hungary and Slovenia. You can just cross the border and order anything in german no problem, at least in the border regions to Austria.
@@Echoak95 Yes, of course. I have only listed the regions where German is the/an official language. It‘s often also the language they speak in school (not as foreign language but as normal language in which all classes are held).
There are of course many, many more regions where many people can simply speak German because they often communicate with Germans (or German speaking people from other countries) or have German speaking ancestors. But their official language is not German.
And Mallorca
and in the Polish region called the Opolskie Voivodship
@@Sr_Punto_ He listed Germany already, including it's 17 Bundeslaender
Fun video. Learned some things about my own continent I didn't even know.
One little correction: Europe (continent, not EU) is bigger than the USA.
US: 9.834.000 km²
Europe: 10.530.000 km². And that's European part of Russia and Greenland not included.
Thanks I just wanted to explain that mistake as well .
Greenland is part of the American continent.
@@PalleRasmussen probably why it's not included then
@@PalleRasmussen Geographically it is, but geopolitically Greenland is part of Europe due to it being settled by the Vikings. So that could be argued as One all? 😉😆
@ralphhathaway-coley5460 the Norse disappeared in the early 15th century, being replaced by the Thule Iniuts who had originally arrived in the northwest at the same time or just after the Norse arrived in the southwest. Only in the 18th century did it get recolonised by Denmark. Today it has a mixed culture of Danish and Inuit, but there is much anti-Danish sentiment and dreams of independence in many places, and the US is working to further their influence. So it will probably not be Danish for much longer. They do like the Danish welfare state and the € 600000 we send them every year to sustain that very system, which they could not afford themselves.
Maltese here. I'm just satisfied people acknowledge we exist altogether now, since growing up I had nothing but stares of confusion whenever I told people where I'm from, amusing yet unrecognisable accent and all.
You have a beautiful country, rich of history and filled with wonderful people of all kinds and heritages dude! I went to Malta about a Year ago and can wait to visit agin. Greetings from Germany. 😊
As for American tourist, too many have the habit of shouting across the shop or restaurant as if the are in their back yard. Basically their whole demeanor is like they are in their back yard. Too much at home, getting too close and wanting to interact with everybody. But this is the type that screams "OMG" all the time when they are at home. It is not all Americans. It´s the type that feels Europe is like a kind of Disneyland. I do find there is often a certain intitlement attached to those as wel. Like they pay for it so they should be served upon like royalty. It doesn´t work that way here.
Adults acting like us in our young teen times on a school trip. They're also about to elect a huge spoiled orange todler to lead them
It doesn't work that way anywhere really..
It's just entitled and spoiled asshats that has gotten away with that sort of behaviour in too many places too many times..
As if Europeans ain't loud and obnoxious while in other countries... I mean outside of Europe that is. 🤣
Typical Swedish everyday behaviors just disappear at the very least, I remember our trip to Brazil and i almost suffered secondhand embarrassment seeing other Swede's "act like Americans".😆
But yeah Americans are a bit worse in that respect.
*entitlement
Yeah, entitled americans can be like entitled brits on roids
Man, I only been to the USA twice, but when you said that it would be cool if Americans would learn 3 languages before the graduate highschool, I can't help but banter a little bit and say I would be fine if they learned 1 language before they graduate highschool. Some younger people in the USA I had the (dis)pleasure of interacting with were speaking something vaguely resembling English, but I couldn't figure out what they want from me. Probably not even their fault, it does seem like your school system is just falling apart.
learning at least 1 foreign language is good for "opening" minds, what really lacks in US....
I was speaking 4 languages when I graduated high school, 3 mandatory (Finnish, Swedish, English) and one voluntary (German). For me it is very difficult to imagine a school environment where you are not learning a foreign language.
@@Searover749 Yes, but they should start with their native language first... :D You can't even consider the gibberish they speak as an accent or dialect, it's just nonsense :D On the other hand, if an American speaks clear english, I understand him much better then a Brit, because Brits tend to overdo their accent, only because they are somehow proud of it :D
@@liftordietrying that already began back in 1976!!!👈 Truth!. The falling Apart 👈
@@liftordietrying Americans have been lowering the school grades for decades!👈
3:22
WHen the "Miniatur Wunderland" in Hamburg, Germany (the world's biggest model railway) opened their "Scandinavia"-Section they invited a bunch of politicians, including the ambassador from FINLAND. Apparently at some point during the event the guy pulled one of the Braun-Brothers (who own/run the wunderland) aside and went "I'm thankful for the invite, I love the place you built here, but..why am I at a Scandinavian event?"
I appreciate that he came anyway and apparently enjoyed himself. Seems to be a nice dude.
To clarify to whom might not know the difference between 'Scandinavia' and the Nordics (Nordic countries):
Scandinavia is:
🔸Norway
🔸Sweden
🔸Denmark
I won't go into the story why Denmark is 'Scandinavian', except for the language. The name Scandinavia is from the Scandinavian mountain ridge through Norway and the west and north-west of Sweden. The Scandinavian peninsula.
The five Nordic countries:
🔸Finland
🔸Sweden
🔸Norway
🔸Iceland
🔸Denmark (also the Faroese Islands. Greenland belongs to Denmark too, but is NOT considered a Nordic country.
With one exception we speak Scandinavian languages, also called Nordic languages, which isn't entirely correct.
Iceland and the Faroese Islands (the latter technically is Denmark) became occupied by Scandinavians, Vikings, speaking Old Norse. Old Norse was the common language in what today is Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
The Danes are born with a huge, hot potato in their mouth, and can't spit it out. So we must be understanding, and accept that if you're not Danish you will have a hell trying to understand what they say.🙄. Otherwise Norwegian, especially their written variaty "bokmål' book " is very similar to Danish. Spoken is Norwegian and Swedish similar.
We three can read and understand each other's
languages, but speaking can be trickier. In general Swedes can understand Norwegian decently well, but Danish... Not so much.
Norwegians usually understand Swedish well, and very often Danish.
The Danes are sometimes victims of their own pronunciation, My experience is either they understand Swedish well, or not at all. But Norwegian works fine.
The situation between Icelandic and Faroese is about the same. Reading can work well, speaking can be more troublesome, however, but some say it's no problem.
Also, the language spoken on the Finnish islands Åland is Swedish, and in two minor areas of mainland Finland too.
(Finland used to be a part of Sweden for 500-600 years, until a big country east of Finland invaded it. 1809 Sweden lost Finland. 1917 Finland managed to peacefully sneak out of the grip of the Russian claws.)
In Finland they speak a TOTALLY different language than the rest of the Nordics.
Finnish is very closely related to Estonian. Some may ask: "Where is Estonia?" Just across Finnish Bay, a part of the Baltic Sea, and there it is, the Baltics, south of Finland, Estonia is the northern, Latvia in the middle, Lithuania in the south. Latvian and Lithuanian are closely related to each other, NOT to Estonian.
NEITHER of these languages* are related to Slavic languages, for instance Russian or Polish.
Together with Poland and Germany we surround the Baltic Sea (including Åland's Sea, the Bothnian Sea etc. Well, there are two spots we don't cover; furthest into the Finnish bay there is a city called St Petersburg, Russia. A small strip there is Russian.
And Kaliningrad, by the sea, squeezed in between Poland and Lithuania.
Poor Russia... 😆
*Correction; Latvian and Lithuanian are in the family of Slavic languages, but on another branch than the rest of living Slavic languages. Prussian that was spoken in what now is northern Poland and Kaliningrad. Also a couple more small languages, in the Baltic language family.
@@annabackman3028 Here's a fun geographical fact about Denmark: They share a land border with Canada. No, that does not mean that Canada is in Europe.
@@Shan_Dalamani I know.
'Hans ö', or Tartupaluk. Years ago, the 'Whiskey war' went on between the Danish and Canadian border guards for several years. It wasn't clear to which country the island belonged. One side put their flag, the other took it down and placed theirs instead. A couple of times they left a bottle of whiskey or other liquor there to the other guards.
This friendly little 'war' ended when documents were finally signed, and they split the island.
When Greenland declares independence in the future, I guess they will have the Danish part of the island.
@@annabackman3028 Yep, we have some interesting wars sometimes. Whiskey with the Danes, turbot with the Spanish... the Danes were a lot friendlier about it.
I was reluctantly enjoying your commentary (as it usually is with new channels I don't know), and then 31:30 happened. I subscribed. I like your work.
When she said that southern Europe is where people go for vaccation, that reminded me of a kind of iteresting trend we here in the Nordics have started seeing lately due to the changing climate.
A lot of people from the southern parts of Europe have started coming up here for their summer vaccation because the summers are just too damn hot down there, up here, our summers are still warm, but usually, at least to people from the south, more pleasantly warm, not uncomfortably so
Yep, that's clearly a thing now, often refered to as a "coolcation".
That's smart!!! 😂
Agreed. I'm from Spain and I love to visit more northern countries in the summer, it's so damn hot here
As a hater of hot weather, I have been vacationing in the north of Europe or other cooler places since 20 years ago, before it became a trend. And now everyone and their brother are doing the same! Leave the north to meeeee 😂😂😂😂😂😂 greetings from Italy 😜 (also, not related, I have been interested in Japan and its culture since high school in the 1990s, lived there, speak the language, work for a Japanese company since year 2000 etc... Now it's become so trendy it's impossible to find cheap flights anymore. Why is everyone copying my travel preferences?? 😂)
@@sabrinasambo7570 i always go to austria, for almost 40 years now, and i've only had temps 'to hot' once. Since ur in italy, go to the mountains, its nice and cool there ;)
As an American, YES we are louder in general! It takes a while to adjust but we need to do it. When you have changed your volume level you will be surprised how obnoxious it is to have to listen to someone else's life from ten tables away.
Dear god yes. It's not just the volume, which genuinely IS louder and will grab your attention because of that, it's the second-hand embarrassment of hearing people having a private conversation like they're on a theatre stage. What really strikes us about hearing a bunch of loud Americans isn't the literal volume so much as how they seemingly have no issues broadcasting - to the point of imposing it on others - things that I would be cringing if I said them lowkey and realised I'd been overheard. Not because they're bad, or inappropriate, just because they are my private life.
There are other cultures that have people scream-talk in public (sometimes much worse than Americans) and Europeans still think it's disrespectful and undignified when tourists or immigrants do that, but it doesn't feel as unbelievable in a way, because they speak in their own language so the "why would you let us know that" element isn't there.
How do you tell an American?
You don’t, they’ll tell you.
Americans aren't alone. Even within Europe you'll find some country's where the people are louder or more open and enthusiastic than others. For example the Dutch or the Italians who are more expressive with there body language.
And like it's said in the video. It's how you as a person adapt yourself in a certain situation and place and be mindful of the persons in the near proximity
@@JensVerboven Americans or US citizens? You have North America, Central America and South America, the continent America. The LATINOS are also AMERICANS.
@@dianaschwengle-croes3073 I was reacting on a comment of Stenhard, who I presume is a US citizen:) as he describes himself as an American, I'm not sure. But you right, American is a terminology for the inhabitants of both continents (Nord and south America). And I feel people use this more to describe a US citizen then they do when describing a mexican, Canadian or a Brazilian person for example.
The currency of Poland in the picture is incorrect. That's Czech crowns from the Czech Republic. Poland also has their own currency called "złoty"
Hah kinda shame when she makes video about Europe but does such mistake 😵💫 research is good even if you believe that you know it well.
Also reasoning on currency is kinda funny
O kurwa!
@@darenzy th-cam.com/video/vea5p2i7ZaU/w-d-xo.html
I was wondering that too! Like, dude, that's our money! 😀
11:11 Basically when the borders were drawn, the occupants of the houses got to choose wether they wanted to live in Belgie or Nederlands, so it could vary between neighbours, even in row houses.
15:00 She's actually incorrect here. It is actually the flag of Europe. The Council of Europe (with 46 member countries today) adopted it as the flag of Europe all the way back in the 1950s. EU only started using it as their flag as well decades later. Calling it the Flag of Europe is definitely still correct, even though many associate it with EU today.
I was looking for this comment. Thank you for clearing this up.
Commenting to help keep this visible.
@@Aotearas Adding to that workforce!
You mean the 'Council of Europe', not the 'European Council' which is an EU institute.
Names are close, organizations not.
Original post has been corrected. Confusion often happens.
Same. Thanks for the clarification so I (and others) don't have to
25:30 calling McDonald's a restaurant is a criminal offence
People avoid to admit that more and more western europeans are moving in east. They prefer to live in countries like Greece, Croatia or Romania (even Hungary for those who like the current political trend) due to lower prices, lower criminality index and of course due to the fact that those countries are really beautiful(especially Greece and Croatia). The difference between West and East becomes lower and lower every year. Romania(latin, not slavic, btw), for example, has the fastest economical growth in Europe in the last 15 years which is mind-boggling.
Lived in Germany, Greece and now Romania and I can confirm that the trend is perfectly understandable.
From my limited contacts with American tourists I can confirm that yes you are talkative and loud. My last involuntary interaction was three months ago in a restaurant in a small village next to a Polish shore. I was waiting with my husband for our meal and I HAD TO listen to the conversation between two Americans and a Polish guy (whom I could barely hear). Within those 60 minutes I learned almost everything about their business career.
I used to be a waiter at a restaurant near a famous Golf club which attracts many European tourists. What I learned there was that most Americans aren't loud(except for certain areas) but that groups are loud, even European, and especially those who are on a vacation/holiday. A single Irishman is quiet as a mouse until he is joined by 4 of his buddies.
I was on a train ride yesterday and there was a group of Americans sitting behind me. They were so loud while nobody else on the train was speaking, I also ended up learning everything about their lives lol
The weirdly divided town(s) of Baarle-Hertog (BE)/Baarle-Nassau (NL) is an interesting thing to look into. It's not just divided in two parts. It's an entire patchwork of borders throughout the area. And that's not the only weird border thing we Belgians have going..... there's also the VennBahn area (which even most Belgians don't know about), which includes (among others) one German enclave, consisting of one house and garden.
Baarle Hertog is in the Netherlands but it is belgium. It is not even on the border of Belgium and the Netherlands . It is in de province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.
Channel always exciting to watch; I don't learn much about Europe but, implicitly, a lot about the United States; plus he's so friendly!
France is curious, it is both from the South and the North, Italy can be very cold (the climate as well as the people) and the same for Spain. France is Catholic and Protestant, but with a marked Jewish influence for those who look a little. Italy is less and less Catholic and its Catholicism is more joyful and relaxed than that of Spain. Germans in Bavaria are often friendly and open, Poles are Germans who speak "Russian". France, Italy, and Spain have great differences between their North and South; and so on. It is difficult to segment Europe!
Why are they divided like that? What series of events led to such weird borders.
@@SirAdrian87 short version: A series of landexchanges during feudal times (starting at about the year 1190). But because some fields were already in use or promised to others, those areas weren't included in the trade, leading to a patchwork of independantly owned pieces of land. As those areas in later years got put together through gifts, inheritances, and such, it got even more complicated.
This led to a host of problems and attempts to rectify the situation all the way up until 1996 (with the creation of "werkgroup Baarle", which regulates the cooporation of both countries in this area).
For instance, in world war 1, where Belgium was occupied territory, but the Netherlands weren't the German occupier couldn't reach the Belgian enclaves without violating the neutrality of the Netherlands. Smuggling and resistance operations of the Belgians in those enclaves ran rampant during those years.
@@abdelaziezdeboer6377 4 out of the 26 parts of Baarle Hertog do border other Belgian communities though.....
America is bigger in size than Europe???? I can only assume she's confusing Europe with the EU. Europe is 10.53 million km², The USA is 9.83 million km². Also, when did the US lose Alaska? Who's got it now? I bet it's the Dutch.
Putin used the lack of geographical knowledge in the US and claimed Alaska, because it was Russian before.
Ruzzia wants the Alaska back. Didn’t you know that? Pootin also wants Spain. He is completely out of his mind.
She also seemed to forget about Iceland as existing.
Be fair. Without the need for GAS and OIL, nobody in their right mind would call Russia Europe. And they arent. The iron curtain starts at the border.
Well, America is a lot bigger than Europe. Canada, the USA and Brazil each are almost as big as Europe. America has more than 42 million square kilometres or about 4 times the land area of Europe.
I think whats most missing from her video regarding safety, is that Europe have mostly better more strict gun control, and generally less guns than USa. In many countries there was never a school schooting , or mass schooting due to more restriction regarding owning a gun.
So now they use knives, vehicles and a nice variety of home made bombs instead of guns. And let's not forget, the average civilians may not have their guns anymore, but the criminals still do.
No such attack in hiostory of my country ( Poland) , do you have any data about other countries confirming that number of school attacks witch "alternative weapons" are in any way similiar to gun school attacks in USA ? Doubt it
Bot @@thenewfoundation9822
About Swedens crime problem. We really do have a problem, but mainly that crimes have started to take other forms than they used to have. We have gang-related crimes in a way that was not so common twenty years ago. Violent crimes that have been noticed in news often are gang-war shootings or bombings (not always to kill someone, just to scare or as a threat). What is very bad is that the gangs have started to recruit really young teens to do very violent crimes - gang murders done by 15 year olds with no crime records. Our problem have started to move to our neighbors Denmark and Norway too, with young kids sent over the border to shoot someone.
This is weird to hear, i mean i am not that far away (Latvia) but i always figured, if for some inexplicable reason i'd be forced out of my own country, i'd rush to Sweden because i always assumed you lot just have really nice disposition, as in kind people, wooly cows, snowy mountains and a lot of small villages with wooden cottages....but gang wars, that just honestly sounds unbelievable...
I have a feeling these gang wars started happening when you guys started letting more immigrants in, am i right?
@Bastacat It's weird for us too. But it has been increasing over the years. Mainly it's violence among criminals but things spread and totally innocent bystanders can be hurt or killed. Especially when there are "gangsters" that are kids themselves, high on adrenaline, and puberty hormones.
I'm not fearful when I move around in the city, though, but I would be a bit more cautious in some areas and some times.
@@Bastacatmostly in bigger cities, and it just so happened to go up as immigration from outside of Europe grew... hmmmmmm
@@Graaskaegg You need to import more muslims xD
Two steps smarter Americans know not only it’s more than Germany, France and Italy, they know that in the south-west of Europe there’s a peninsula where they speak Mexican ;)
We don't all speak Mexican. Some of us speak Brazilian.
And the islands to the west, where they speak American.
@@CristianoDrumond-k5t fair point 😂
You talk about Spain...😂...good one! I guess it's a joke that not a lot of people get
@@loganleborgne420 That's concerning then... 😅
15:11 It is the Europe flag, it was designed by the Council of Europe as their flag and as the flag for Europe.
Eu adopted it in 1985, with permission from the Council of Europe.
So it is both the flag of Europe and the flag of EU.
Yes, was about to comment the same. The Council of Europe has nothing to do with the EU and uses both the flag and the anthem (or as you wrote, is even the initiator to use them for europe stuff in first place). Almost every european country (e.g. except Russia [was part, but war and so on], Belarus) are part of it; also some eurasian countries like Turkey, Georgia are participants. So for all these countries it is totally eligable to use the european flag and therefore for europe as a whole since the ones not taking part are neglectable here imo.
I dont agree. In Europe has 17 European countries who dont belong to EU organisation and even us club members have our own individual flags, hymns and independent days we celebrate and history. EU has no part in them and nothing to do with our long histories.
It is also disturbing that EU gives us now rules which dont necesserily align with every country because there is no similarities with Romania and Norway. Whats good in one country is not necessarily good in other.
EU flag is EU organisation flag, not European flag. Those European countries who dont belong to EU club are as much European as those who does not. European countries are old, deep rooted in history. They existed thousands years before EU and will exist after.
@@susanna8612 The "EU flag" is not a "EU flag". It is a flag introduced by the council of europe, that is not an eu institution. almost every european country (46 of [46 to 50]) is part of that council; so it really IS the european flag, not only EU.
@theoremofnik 27 countries out of 44 European countries is part of EU. And before early 2000's when euro was also formed and EU became the "thing" we were not even aware of that flag. Its not our identity and Europe is not Unated States of America but continent of 44 independent countries with own national flags.
@@susanna8612 it is really not that difficult to read
If anyone is interested, Gaelic Scottish is a language but hardly anyone speaks it, most people in Scotland just speak English. And yea if you start down south and travel to Wales, Ireland and up north the accent changes dramatically, also British counties are like US states
Not to mention in Wales they also have their own completely separate language!
Is scots-gaelic and irish mutualy intelligible?
17:15 Poland has it's own currency Złoty but the bank notes shown here are Czech koruna, Sweden has Swedish krona (koruna/krona = crown)
Danmark has kroner
Oh, and for Americans - to pronounce the "ł" in Złoty, just swallow your tongue while saying an L and a W simultaneously :)
@@michael-gk3ibAnd Norway has it's own too.
I'm from Czechia and I can say, if some non-European would say "Czech Republic is Eastern Europe" I would be happy, that they at least know where Czech Republic is.
However, at 17:12 it says Polish money, but those are Czech crowns, not Polish Zloty.
Czech republic is seen as eastern by some people still, due to the former iron curtain. But in reality, Prague is further west than Vienna or Salzburg.
@@mick-berry5331 Eastern Europe is basically Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova. Cross these countries' borders into the EU and you'll be in a totally different universe economically, socially and culturally. Eastern bloc was what shaped the Eastern Europe term decades ago. It's been totally irrelevant for a long time now.
Czech is IN the eastern part of Europe. Though tbf it is more Central Europe
@@JoriDiculous Then the former communist Saxony and Brandenburg is Eastern Europe.
Poland, Germany, Asutria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic are actually Central Europe.
Around 11:00, the lady's talking about Baarle-Hertog (BE)/Baarle-Nassau (NL). The reasons for this absolute weirdness of a border are historical, and I'm sure you'll be able to find several videos that go into the hows and whys of the situation, as well as the administrative silliness that comes with it. for example: the place/country where your front door is determines where your taxes go to.
I thought he reacted to the Geography Now video about the Netherlands which talks about it? But yeah, there are multiple videos about it.
This should deserve a reaction video by itself
and in the case of your door being in both nations (like in the video), you decide which country you pay taxes to.
During covid this got very confusing when Belgium was in lock down but the Netherlands wasn't. Some shops being in both countries had to close off certain sections because those were in Belgium, whereas the parts that were in the Netherlands could remain open.
Hi there, Good content... more people in the west need to see it... I am a Canadian Expat that has lived internationally for 26 years... currently in Tbilisi Georgia (former soviet republic NOT the state in US)... and the world is amazing... so much to experience and learn and some great people everywhere. Again great job on your video.
fun fact about UK soccer international team(s)
- in Olympics, UK attends as 1 country
- in FIFA World Cup, they attend as 4 countries
- in UEFA Euro, they attend as 4 countries
You mean football?
@@marcinkalinski308 yes and no :D This is American channel so I had to adjust wording but here is the thing: th-cam.com/video/XGb1D_xbtiY/w-d-xo.html
@vladimirmoravek6749
5 days ago (edited)
fun fact about UK soccer international team(s)
- in Olympics, UK attends as 1 country.......... Not exactly. If they qualify ( and only England is good enough to ) then the IOC make the UK enter as Team GB. They wont let the four countries enter individually , and there is no ' UK ' football team. The problem is , if the IOC say that they have to enter as the UK , then Fifa and Uefa might do the same. Which would mean no players from the three other countries would get into the UK team, as it would be full of English players only. Thats one of the reasons why we ignore the Olympics as a ' top ' level competition. IOC only let 4 European teams in? Really ? When 20 of the top 30 football teams are European?
@@richard6440 Actually that's not quite true. No British country even take part in the qualification process, so the only way they could qualify is if they are to host the Olympics (which is what happened in 2012). THe reason for this is that the four Associations (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) have individual places at the FIFA and UEFA top tables. If they were to compete as Team GB at Olympics, this would be undermined. It took a lot of politicking to even allow a TeamGB to happen in the 2012 Olympics. Also notice it was TeamGB.. not Team UK... so it didn't technically include Northern Ireland (we should call it Team UK..)
@stephenpalmer9375 more confusingly. This doesn't aply to the women. Who do compeat at the olypmics.
Where I grew up in Yorkshire, the accent changed very slightly from village to village. In some cases we could identify which street. This was useful for identifying ‘outsiders’ 😄 People now move around more so you can’t really do that any longer.
I'm from Huddersfield now live in Western Australia, i can pick a Yorkshire accent know problem aswell 👍
@@-sandman4605 I visited Huddersfield back in around 1994 for a few days and started picking up the accent!
@@-sandman4605 I was actually in Huddersfield on Saturday. You're not missing owt 😂Head of Steam on the station isn't bad though.
Yeah I'm from Leeds very true
You can always spot an offcumdum
"Do you live in Belgium or do you live in Netherlands?"
Yes
Belgica is Latin for Netherlands, the New Netherlands colony in North America was called Nova Belgica on maps in Latin. Even Dutch gold and silver coins say: confederation of Belgian provinces.
@@dutchman7623 This is completely incorrect, Belgae was a thing before Belgica and it has nothing to do with Netherlands. It comes from proto-Germanic/Indo-European basically meaning to swell with anger or battle fury. During that same time period The Netherlands was called Germania Inferior and Batavia meaning good island because of the fertile ground.
Not confusing to people from DFW.
My mailbox is in Belgium, my living room is in the Netherlands, I eat in Belgium and I sleep in the Netherlands.
No i live in Vlaanderen😂
Just discovered your channel through this video. It is very refreshing to see someone that open minded and eager to learn about other parts of the world. All the best Sir!
Regarding the languages - I'm from Slovakia, so I obviously speak Slovak. I come from a mixed Slovak/Hungarian family and I live near the Hungarian border so I speak fluent Hungarian too. Slovakia used to be part of Czechoslovakia and the Czech and Slovak languages are quite similar, therefore I also speak Czech (a lot of Slovakians do). I learned some English in school and got more proficient in it because I used it a lot at work. So, yes it is quite common for Europeans to speak more languages.
Swedes learn English from an early age in school, but it's the only mandatory language apart from Swedish. You can take French, Spanish or German as a second language later, but it's not mandatory and you can take electronics or programming (for instance) instead.
7:45 she just said stable governments for Slovakia : )
8:25 capital of Paris : D
17:20 - the money marked as "Poland" are actually Czech Crowns.
Glad that someone else caught that mistake
@@czechberliner_motorcycling Zrovna jsem to chtěl napsat :D
Já jsem si říkal : CO TO MÁ ZNAMENAT když jsem to viděl
at 11:40 she is wrong, Europe is bigger than the US, the EU(European Union) is smaller than the US
search for the most beautiful McD in the world, Budapest Nyugati(Westend) Trainstation should be one of the first
Not by much, but yes... Europe’s land area is about 3.9 million square miles, approximately 5% larger than the U.S., which has a land area of about 3.7 million square miles.
And the European part of Russia alone is as large as the area from Portugal to Germany, another reason why lumping a bunch of countries together with it as Eastern Europe makes little sense. The French get upset if you say that someone from Normandy is the same as someone from Burgundy and yet they'd handwave away half of the continent as "the same"
@@Sciss0rman
strange numbers here : Europe is 10 MSqkm, US are 9 MSqkm ! That's 1MSqkm difference = 10%.
@@Searover749 10,100,953 km² Europe compared to 9,582,956 km² US
@@barkasz6066 And yet, somehow russia isn't part of Europe no matter what geography tells you. Russia is just a civilizational failure at most levels and nothing more than a giant societal abomination for the last 1500 years to begin with...
Damn, massive respect for trying to break the american stereotype! I'm amazed to see an american who actually knows more about central europe than me. Probably.
Much love ❤
The belief is based on a stereotype. You cannot generalize people, as that is a mindset typical of small-minded individuals. When considering factors like income and education, Americans are as knowledgeable as Europeans. Just as there are foolish people wherever you are from, there are also foolish people in the United States. Given the size of the U.S. and its large population, the likelihood of encountering such individuals is greater. This stereotype makes it easier for people to highlight and spread any "dumb" remark or action from an American, which they might not do if the person were from a different country.
There is a significant hypocrisy rooted in the European sense of superiority and anti-American sentiment. Many Europeans are just as uninformed about Africa and Asia as they claim Americans are about the wider world. However, this inconsistency is rarely acknowledged or discussed. The focus tends to be solely on how much Americans know about Europe, or shall I say don't know...
@@Kenny-yl9pc We (in Europe) know an awful lot about Asian or African (or South-American, for that matter) countries. We actually have school subjects that teach us about these things.
@@dorisschneider-coutandin9965 Rien que dans la vidéo les américains pensent que la Russie est en Europe alors quelle est sur le continent Asiatique 🤣ça part mal
hi nice video man! i'm from belgium and to explain a little about houses on the border with the netherlands... some houses have like 2 mailboxes with 2 different adresses, 1 for each country (:( usually there are not much complications but during the 2020 pandemic it was chaos
Regarding loud Americans....😛 During my years working on cruise ships, the crews onboard did talk about this fact. And there was one trend that stood out. And that was which age group of Americans were the loudest and braggiest. And this was from the age of late 50s and upwards, and especially if they operated in groups with more than 2 ppl in it. These groups you could hear a long way away 😊 Younger Americans tended to be more quiet.
Also, on these cruise ships that were all in the 5 Star ++ category with equally high quality food served, only Americans would go ashore to a McDonalds or Burger King joint to by "food" and bring with them back onboard.
I really do enjoy your videos Ian, keep 'em coming !!
Best regards form Norway
😂 I am surprised that the older folks were the loudest. Maybe getting hearing impaired, too ?
@@mick-berry5331 😁😆 Yeah, that might be a valid reason!! 🙂
Boomers. Were they phat too?
@@mick-berry5331 It makes sense tho, younger folks most likely get introduced to EU through internet, so even when it's their first time visiting, in some ways they are already somewhat ''cultured'' Older people most likely have this assumption that if they are loud enough while visiting a country they couldn't point out on a map to save a life, everyone might just assume that they are ''regulars'' when in fact they haven't got a clue where they are about to land. It's a way to cope with anxiety...maybe.
@@Bastacat I don't know, people react in strange ways... I am 67, I visited the Philippines for the first time last year. I wasn't anxious in the least. 🤣
US is not bigger than Europe. Land mass of Europe is around 3.5% larger than that of US.
That depends on where you put the european border. For example would you count the caucasian republics? And that little bit of kasachstan? And how far into russia? And do you count eastern trace (so the part of turkey where istanbul is)? And greenland?
@@lorkantheone2350 it ends basically at Caucasus mountain range, Ural mountain range and Bosporus straight
@WwarpfirewW what about greenland
@lorkantheone2350 it's in north America, we are talking about geography, but it's closer to Europe and govern as autonomous region under Denmark. Don't want to be rude but you can search it in 10s on Wikipedia ✌️
* A mean culturally closer
@WwarpfirewW all good, was my mistake comenting before googleing it
The problem with eastern Europe is that it is a historical term from the Cold War era. Back then, the Europe was divided into just western and eastern (although some countries, notably Finland and Yugoslavia, are somewhat hard to categorize).
Right now, I do the division as follows:
northern Europe: Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania
western Europe: Ireland, United Kingdom, France (and Monaco), Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands
southern Europe: Portugal, Spain, Italy (and Malta, Vatican, San Marino), Greece
central Europe: Germany, Switzerland (and Liechtenstein), Austria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia
southeastern Europe: Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania
eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova
Some countries, such as Slovenia, Switzerland, Moldova or Albania, could be considered transitional.
If you go with political divide Yugoslavia was socialist and Finland was democratic with governments from both moderate left and moderate right.
Fun fact: geographically, Romania is part of central Europe, because Europe stretches to the Ural mountains. So it is the center of Europe and not the southeastern edge. And one more thing, the Balkan mountains do not pass north of the Danube, so it is not a Balkan country either.
Finland is geographically eastern Europe, but thats it. Finland should always be classed as Western European when talking about West vs East, because their country is ran like a western country, their culture is like sweden, their history is mostly swedish - and Finland never was part of USSR (soviet). So Finland should always be categorized as Western when talking politics.
If you included Kosovo(not fully recognized) than you should also include Liberland.
... Nah, I'd say that Eastern for pretty much all the Slavic countries still applies and I - as a Czech don't see the issue or need to change it to anything else. Feels a bit pointless.
In Finland we have free opening hours for business. So basicly almost anything can be open 24/7. Who ever runs the shop can deside how to keep butique opened. But there is restrictions for some items that are sold like alcohol. In shops you can buy alcohon between 9am to 9 pm. Baars and restaurants can sell alcohol for 4am. Not sure about pharmaceutical products, but most of those closes quite early like 8pm, but i know for sure that some are open until midnight.
Some times it is hard to get any service after you´ve got your food in restaurant. They don´t push you to order more what you´ve ordered already. They might ask do you want dessert, but not all the places.
We started to learn second language at third grade. We had to choose from Swedish or English. We could took other language as well. Those options were French, German, Spanish or Russian.
I actually tought that redhead would have some Scott or Irish heritage. So not surpricing about the heritage.
When I grew up in The Netherlands as a kid we started learning English when I was around 9 years old. And when I went to high school (12y old) we also needed to learn German and French. And Spanish was optional. And kids that were at a higher level in highschool also had Latin and/or Greek.
I'm living in Sweden now and my kids learn English from age 7.
@@Yinyara Actually we had to choose second foreing language at seventh grade too. I started to learn Swedish first and English later. I actually were pretty good in English already becouse all the games and most of the movies were English. I basicly never need Swedish in Finland or it is very rare so it is harder to speak when you would need it. Just easier to talk English whit the Swedes.
@@ArchieArpeggio Haha yeah, almost everyone in Sweden can talk pretty good English, when I try to talk Swedish and they notice I'm not that great at talking Swedish, everyone automatically switches to English. So even in Sweden it's hard to get to talk in Swedish as a foreigner 😉
@@Yinyara Well the same happens here too. Also Finnish is way harder to learn than Swedish. So for learning you need to get that practice.
The baltic countries are situated around the baltic sea...that's how we differentiate them from the balkan and slavs....it may seem not that different for others...but they r really different culturally,geographically,mentality and history....
Also I want to point out and mention a story, when it comes to language barriers and speaking your own language in a different country, cause people think its only americans or brits that go to another country and speak english expecting people to know it but its not the case. Around 10 years ago I was volunteering at a hostel in Las Vegas as a receptionist, I as a Maltese, speak Maltese and English. Was working, and alot of the times we had people from different countries visiting Vegas. One time we had a big group of Italians come to visit, one of the group members came to check themselves in for the rest of the group, and he asked me in Italian (I know very few words and phrases in Italian so I understood this) "Do you speak Italian?", I looked at him said "No, do you speak Maltese?" (in English of course) he looked at me confused and said No. I said "well that's where I am from, and since you don't we will just stick with English"
Brits don't go to other countries expecting them to speak English
That's an ignorant misconception.
They will speak English (or try a very basic phrase in that country's language if they only need a basic answer) until they find out the other person doesn't and will pull out the phrase book.
There's no expectation just trying to make things simpler.
I bet when you go to a foreign country you speak English to them.
@@Gambit771 as a person from a foreign country with alot of English people visiting, yes they do. Though they do attempt to ask how things are said in Maltese, and i did also say "cause people think its only americans or brits" i didnt say I think that. But way to jump the gun on your reply there buddy
@@Gambit771 Jew tridni najdlek biex tiehdu foxx kemm ghandek. Convinced?
To be fair, if there's a place where could be easy to find multilingual people, is in the reception of a hotel in a touristic city. You can find here in Spain a lot of hotels with multilingual people at the reception desk. And I mean multilingual, as in speaking the basics of at least Spanish, English, Chinese, French, German Italian, and maybe some Russian or Arabic to accomodate guests. I am not telling that every employee is fluent in all of them, but you can take for granted that they can manage 4 or 5. There are tourism schools and university degrees (in plural), and it's the basics of it.
@@frajatheone9264 I think that depends on the chain of hotel, the country and the city. This was a hostel, and I was only volunteering there for 3 months, as was most people volunteering there. Anywhere I have been at least so far its usually English and the language of the country, maybe 1 other language. The most hotels I can think of where the front desks would be that multilingual would be like the hilton, or most hotels in Dubai.
About the languages, In Spain we have regional languages (Catalán, Valenciano, Gallego, Bable, Euskera) apart of the oficial for the estate (Spanish) and also applies that in the schools you can learn the neighbours languages(French but optional) and English as part of the scholar curriculum.
So for my case I have same amount of classes for Valenciano, Spanish and English and I can opt to study French as optional.
As a galician I hated that I had two years of french instead of portuguese, living half an hour from Portugal.
We had to learn galician, spanish, english and french (french only for two years)
Galician, Catalan and Euskera are official lenguages too.
Dou fé meu, dou boa fé de eso😂@@MrFiver1111
_In Spain we have regional languages (Catalán, Valenciano, Gallego, Bable, Euskera) apart of the oficial for the estate (Spanish)_
To be precise, the *official* languages are: Spanish, Catalan/Valencian, Galician, Basque and Aranese Occitan.
Apart from that, there are regional languages: Amazigh, Ceutan, Aragonese, Asturleonese, ...
@@MrFiver1111 Please, never hate to learn something and add it to your cultural background. I have study french for many years and I'm very grateful for that.
Austria started to have some shops that are open even on sundays - but working on Sunday/Holidays is paid by twice the usual pay, that also extents to working past 8 p.m. - there are some contractual clauses about this and expections (like certain shift contracts, tourism and hospitals), but this applies to at least 80 % of normal jobs.
I'm growing fond of your reactions :) Keep them coming :)
I am Ukrainian.
I speak Ukrainian as a native language.
I learned Russian in school, because lots of kids spoke it. I had Russian as a school discipline only for 2 years.
I learned English at school, and it was mandatory.
And I had an option to learn German French or Spanish at school as a second language. I chose French, but i already forgot almost everything. And I did learn some of German as an adult for fun (I would say A2 level, not higher).
I am bad at languages, so avoided them as much as possible.
Got Dutch, English, French and German. Didn't do any classical like Latin or Greek, had to learn some of them though at Catholic Church... Mea culpa...
half year in poland and u can speak 70 % with any problem :D
Also ukrainian. But from the western part of the country. We did not have russian in school. But most people can speak the language. Also I'm half hungarian. So I can also speak it. And English we learned in school. So it's 3 just by existing )
In Poland, you learn at least two foreign languages in schools, starting seriously from the 4th grade of primary school with English, which you then have to pass in the final exam in high school if you want to continue studying at university level.
And in studies, all students must obtain at least a B2 foreign language certificate if they want to complete at least a bachelor's degree. The youngest of my daughters is in her first year of university studies (Iberian studies), she has C1 in both English and Spanish, and she is also planning to take up Portuguese :) However, my middle daughter, in addition to English, has also obtained a certificate in sign language, as another foreign language ( universities provide such opportunities).
You can live with Sundays when most shops are closed. Especially since Saturday is also a day off from work, and shops are open even until very late. In addition, we have chains of small stores, the most popular of which is "Żabka" (something similar to 7/11, but with a much larger selection of goods) - and they, like cinemas, theaters, amusement parks, swimming pools or bars and restaurants, operate in Sunday. Generally, a small business can be open on Sunday, it depends on the owner and the restrictions are not great. However, if you want to buy clothes in a large chain or a car on Sunday - well, no, you won't.
In parts of the UK Celtic languages still exist (Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Cornish) in addition to the Germanic language English, but some of them only have very few speakers left. Breton is a Celtic language that still is spoken by some in Brittany, France. There are other countries with somewhat "obscure" minority languages, in Germany you have the Slavic language Sorbian as well as Frisian and Romani, a Indo-Aryan language with a presence in quite a few countries, in Italy there are Ladin and Friulian as well as Sardinian and there's Romansh in Switzerland, for example.
@Raider_MXD
Just in Norway, there's more than just Norwegian spoken.
We have 2 different types of Norwegian taught: Nynorsk (New Norwegian) and Bokmål (Book Language).
Nynorsk is the purest form of Norwegian, as it was gathered from the different dialects of coastal Norway, but it has a waining use at about 17%. Bokmål is the hybrid language of Norwegian and Danish used in Oslo and other urban areas, and they have the most use now.
Then there's the Sami languages of the indigenous Sami people in Norway, where I know about 4 types, but that's about all I know about them.
Also in Scotland there is Scots Leid and Doric too.
In the Netherlands, we also have Fries as a language. It's very different from the German and Danish Frisian though.
@Raider_MXD Gorhemynadow dhyworth Kernow ow hothman.
In Italy there are Arbëreshë, Molisean Croats, Catalans and in the north Italy Slovenes, Germanic communities (South Tyrol, Veneto, Friuli) and FrancoProveçales in Valle d'Aosta.
Very nice reaction! :)
@Diferences: I am from the most western State of Austria. Our culture is very different from the rest of Austria, more like Switzerland and SouthWestern Germany. In my Valley even the smallest village has a slightly different dialect than its neighbours and they dialect, culture and history is different than the next valley...
But luckily the rivalry between the villages and valleys is noticeably smaller than before.
Nobody in central Europe likes to be call Eastern Europe because for some (namely Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary) association with proper Eastern Europe a.k.a Russia was by force and lasted only 40 years (for Poland about 200 years more). 40 years that somehow magically wiped out 1500 years of shared history and culture with Europe west of Carpathian mountains. There was very sparse contact with Europeans east of those mountains because those vast grass planes were occupied by various Asian nomads who weren't exactly friendly. Imagine if we still called Americas including the USA "the colonies" or everyone west of Bratislava "the Reich". Nonsense.
I don't know about nobody, because I'm Czech and I'm fine with it. I mean, isn't German like Western/Central Europe? Should people wish to avoid being called either of those because of the bad history with Germany? And let's not forget Western Europe includes the UK and you'd have to have lived under a rock to not know at least some of the things the Brits were historically guilty of.
Ha, ha, ha, you still do it! I've heard many british people saying "the colonies" or "the states".
Nah, I'm Polish and idgaf. Some people here seem ashamed to be put in the same category as Ukraine or Bulgaria, but really, we're loser to them geographically, culturally, economically than we are to Germany or Switzerland. I don't think our history with Russia should define the region either way - denying being Eastern European because of Russia is just as silly as lumping us together as the same thing (I barely even consider Russia an European country anyway tbh).
Dude, your videos are great! As a son of turkish immigrants, born and raised in Germany, I would like to add:
There is a very unique history of migration in Europe after the destruction caused by the WWs. Workers invited to rebuilt e.g. Germany as a consequence settled here. So many different ethnic communities formed unique new identities in their countries. Many of us do not consider ourselves Germans nor Turks per se, because neither of those labels really fit. This phenomenon created many unique food variations, music and other cultural synergies all over Europe. If not the root cause of this, the effects can be compared to Mexican Americans in the US.
It is also the root of many socio-political issues here. Don't mean to get too deep, but I thought, this might be interesting to you. Cheers, keep it up!
As far as I can see there are at least 2 youtubers who are fairly knowledgeable of Europe, that's you and Charlie Vest. So you guys are in my favour as you both are willing to get to know what and how in Europe. As a Dutch person I thank you ( both )
You should check out MoreJPS, he's a really nice young guy from the US who's very interested in Europe (and the Netherlands) as well.
11:46 Yup, I bet 98% of Americans would be surprised to find out that they're only 5% of the Earth's population.
I saw an American in a comment section saying that the UK science based spaceflight & cosmology channel, Astrum, should switch from SI units to "American standard" imperial measurements because "most people on the internet are American"!
When I asked why 95% of the Earth's population should conform to the 5% who are stuck in the 19th century when it comes to metrology, he just went quiet.
We in Sweden don't use Euro we use Swedish kronor
No you use Euros, you are European
@@FeelMetalMan no. we done use Euro's in .dk and .se and .no and .fi... ppl can pay with them but not everywere :)
and im from Denmark
@@FeelMetalMan so no. we dont use them unless we go outside our contry
@@D3vil666dk They do use Euros in Finland though. Just not the rest.
@@Ragedaonenlonely the plural of euro is euro.
I am born in England. Lived in Greece for years. My heritage is Egypt and Israel. My lady is half Greek, my daughter-in-law is from Mexico. I have you all beaten when it comes to food..... But bloody hell, I'm on a diet at the moment.
Here in Australia I have neighbours who are a Greek family with one Filipina daughter-in-law and they run a small chain of pizza shops where the house speciality is Tandoori pizza.
Personally, if I'm trying to cut back on sugars and fats and carbs in my food, I just add more spices. All the flavour, no extra calories!
About the nap in the middle of the day, it has to do with the weather as you said. At those hours it was so hot that it was dangerous to work on the fields, so they just slept until it was a bit colder.
17:50 - If you wanna easy convert PLN into US.Dollar or Euro just multiply by 4 and other way around if you wanna know how much you will get PLN from US.Dollar or Euro
1 Euro/Dollar = ~4 PLN
1 PLN = ~0.25 Euro/Dollar
Of course it may be different from what I typed but it's x4 anyway with cents of difference because there is that thing called current exchange rate but it's pretty much same
The US has a small population for it's size.
But it is a new country compared to Europe. Give it a few thousand years.
That's funny to hear from an Australia perspective. Australias land mass is very similar to the US and we have 26 million compared to 335 million people in the US. Obviously alot of Australia is unihabitable.
humans won't have all this time !! great news for the planet !!
Nah just give the country to Democrats, they'll have the population up in no time. It's called open borders something happening right now.
@@Mike...01 Australia is one of the oldest continents! And inhabited for a long time too. Give it time and it will be paradise again. Isn't it going towards Mexico?
Many European states are new countries Italy /or Germany for example /the UK is a new country just like America people either don't know this or choose to ignore it for political reasons .
A funny thing is that even though Switzerland is considered part of Central Europe, we are way more of a wine country than a beer country. We make some great wines but we're not famous for it like France or Italy because nearly all of our production is consumed locally and very little is exported but in terms of quality I'd say we're pretty on par with the greats.
I agree with you, but still we are the country with most beer breweries per capita in Europe.
@nirutivan9811 really ? Huh, neat ! I didn't know about that
I don't know enough about Switzerland's history, but is that just now or historical as well? Being an alpine climate I expect farming would be more oriented towards fruits than grains, making wines and spirits more easily made by the average citizen, but I could also imagine that ciders and meads were more popular historically with the switch to wine happening in the 20th century as Switzerland's strong economy and small population led to a very high GDP per capita.
@cmlemmus494 I'm not sure but iirc the Romans brought grapes with them when their empire was here. In my canton at least the more cultivated fruits are grapes (for wine mainly), apricots and apples. In my canton we also have plenty of rye and some rye bread like nordic countries.
29:10 I don't think any American tourist can compete with British tourists in being loud.
I can confirm some Americans are loud in Europe! Have this one instance where my girlfriend was on the train and an Amarican was really talkative almost yelling out in the train, and funny part is she hears him talk louder than the music in her headphones, saying that "I don't care if people think I'm loud, they are all bottled up and reserved, they should learn from us Americans", all while my girlfriend and a bunch other people was just trying to have a calm 5 hour train ride, instead it was 5 hours listening to him.. (maybe a testament to how reserved we are also)
The thing is that not only European countries are usually quite close to each other because they are usually smaller in size than big world countries, like say, Canada, Brazil or China. But since Europe itself is just a part of Afro-Eurasia, it means that we also can be quite close to other continents, to places part of another civilisation : the arabo-muslim world
Many people tend to not realize that north Africa and the near east are close to Europe. Often, it can be closer to many other European countries. Where I live (and it is in the north half of France), I am closer to Algiers in Algeria than to, say, Varsovia in Poland. From my town Going to Moscow is as far (or as close) as going to the heart of Sahara desert.
From the mediterranean coast of France, north Africa is much closer than London or Berlin. From Spain, just 10 miles separates Europe from north Africa. I was last week a vacation in Southern Spain and did cross the gibraltar detroit and spent a day in Morrocco and come back the same day. It is quite incredible to completly change continent and civilisation and religion by just crossing a piece of sea 10 miles wide for a few hours. Such contrast can be done in very few places.
Yes here in the UK (England) I see lorries that come here from North Africa, they are much more common now since we left the EU.
@@martinwebb1681 There are stories from older Dutch lorrydrivers telling they went as far as Pakistan, Uzbekistan, etc. Can you imagine in the current world, crossing Iran in a lorry from the west? Hell, there even was a London - Calcutta Bus-service in the 50ies, 60ies and 70ies.
@@railion6513 ... Yes, same here in the UK, back in the 1960s and 1970s British trucking companies would travel all across the Middle East and to Pakistan, Afghanistan etc, etc, Also in the 1970s Iranian lorries were a regular sight in London but since the 1970s there have been none.
I just wanna appreciate how good the original video is. Well done, Erica.
Erica i a hottie
too many errors but she stil deserves C+
Oh yeah.A girl got some humor😊
I confirm that in Italy every shop and supermarket have been open during Sundays for about 20 years... Before, when I was a kid, they were open during sundays only in December, for the "shopping/presents season". Honestly, the fact that now shops and malls are open on Sundays, I consider it a DISGRACE.
For someone European teaching Americans not to assume things about Europe and get it wrong she managed to do that quite a lot herself. Of course this is light hearted and a bit of fun, but it's better to get facts correct anyway... Some people might actually believe all of it. This is just her perception, as ONE European/Latvian (or whatever Baltic country she was from, I forget). Kind of funny though, but with a pinch of salt. Others have written some of her more obvious mistakes. 😉
21:32 you can not necessarily chose. Most Dutch schools offer and obligate English, German and French. There is a schooltype called gymnasium and they add Latin and ancient Greek as extra languages. Sometimes you can chose Spanish instead, frisian is an option in Friesland but although there are schools offering other options, it is not common.
Hi! As a Hungarian, I’ve learned three different foreign languages: German, English, and Latin. Yes, THAT Latin - the dead language.
In Poland I've learned in school: German, English, Russian and Latin (yes, damn dead language:))
@@dziczyzna24 Wow. nice!
Just wanted to point out that what was shown as "Poland" currency is actually Czech. But hey, she made so many other errors this one is just an icing on the cake XD
Grocery stores in Italy are almost always closed as well on Sunday. No idea why that one is green! 😅 There are some major supermarkets tat are open till 12 P.M. to be fair, but that's more of an exception than the rule and it does not apply to any normal store I know outside of major cities like Milano or Rome - but that would be true in any country in the EU.
I've lived in the US. Yes, Americans are louder BUT they are louder abroad. Italians and Spanish are also quite loud
Spaniard here, we and our italian brothers are the loudest yes 😅
and the dutch are just nasty....
@@MrFiver1111 yes! I was in italy this summer. I loved the places and the weather, but most of the people were a bit too loud and outgoing for me as an introverted Norwegian 😅
Greeks when they're among friends or family... omg, can they be loud. Sometimes so much so that it sounds like fighting to me. Every single time I spent a longer time in Greece (so, not in a holiday apartment or hotel, but a regular home: I was a freelance journalist and editor, so just took my laptop and stayed for 2-3mths) I needed to seriously acclimatise. Or better said: my ears needed to. In the beginning, it always felt like too much, and that's coming from a Dutch person - we're considered among the louder ones in Western Europe 😅.
To my utmost surprise, they were actually aware of it, them being loud AF, and when it got too bad (as in: I couldn't sleep) I was allowed to say something and they would tone it down. It most likely helped that I speak Greek. During the ypno (siesta), it was considered very bad form to play music or to 'yell'. While it's done less and less in Greece, particularly in the bigger cities, I usually lived in Crete, where naps are still quite common. Interrupting a nap from someone who needs to work soon again till 11pm or later by being loud or revving a scooter unnecessarily can even get you barred from the specific street (usually the scooters). And trust me: the pappous living at the start of said street would take out a chair and some watered down ouzo/raki to sit in front of his house for a couple of hours, hawk eyes on all corners, to check if you were 'good people' or not. Introducing myself, after arriving, to said 'neighbourhood watch' and then immediately being called a "kalo paidi" always made me start my stay with a smile. (Crap, now I'm homesick!)
11:23 Baarle Hertog ( Belgium) Baarle Nassau ( netherlands) , you live where your front door is at, that is who you pay tax to. It may seem confusing to outsiders, but this probably the part of Belgium that makes the most sense 😂, historically speaking.
It seems logical.
After all, you might have many instances where houses are just on the line, so they are in both.
I once was in a discussion with someone who said I probably couldn't name the US states on a map either. And we both did an online test and I had the majority right, and he had more than half wrong.
In addition, the comparison is flawed from the outset when comparing US states with European nations - especially since some of these are also federal nations and have several states themselves.
about euros: while some countries like Czech Republick do not have them as their currency, most big shops WILL accept euros, but at worse rate then in exchange boot. (for exaple 1 euro = 24 Czk in exchange, but in shop its like 1=23. its not big difference)
The blue flag with twelve stars is the both the flag of the Council of Europe and was adopted by the EU later.
The Council of Europe is a much broader organization than the EU.
It does seem like what is considered a "normal" speaking volume might be a little louder in the US, but I think the main thing that tends to be noticable to europeans is that in europe there are more contexts in which we will actively turn our volume down in public, such as if we're queueing, waiting for a show to start, in a less crowded restaurant, etc, to the point where people nearby wont necessarily overhear what we're saying unless they specifically focus their attention on us, whereas it seems more common for anericans to maintain their normal (slightly loud) speaking volume at all times unless explicitly told to be quiet or in a known quiet context like a library
It's great to see how open-minded and knowledgable you are about Europe, the EU and different European countries.
Why
@@ASkhooter I find it interesting, didn’t get exposed to much of this stuff in school and certainly don’t in any mainstream media. I’m equally interested in my own country by the way, it’s just I’ve had decades of learning about it.. and having everything about it constantly presented to me in every form naturally
At 22:27 min.: In The Netherlands the shops are open on sunday, however, Sunday is still considered a traditional resting day insofar as that you are not allowed to make construction noises, with machines and such, be it either professionally or DIY. It's a blessing, but still, some people don't know this or just ignore this prohibition, claiming ignorance in the matter!
For Finland, the question has several answers.
Geographically, Finland is not Scandinavian, but culturally it is partly.
It still has ties to Sweden and was colonized by them from the 13th to the 19th century.
There is a Swedish-speaking minority and it is estimated that about 40% of Finns speak Swedish.
If you visit both countries, you will see many similarities in attitudes, physical appearance, eating habits, etc.
The nobility of Swedish origin is discreet but still influential in Finland.
Well, it was colonised by Swedish settlers in 1100-1350ish, but it technically does NOT count as a colony while part of the Swedish Empire.
Colonies specifically have some level of self-governance, separate from the original country, sometimes in the form of a colonial administration. However, Finland was considered part of "Sweden proper" and ruled directly from Stockholm, making it a fully integrated province of the Kingdom of Sweden until 1809.
I live in Western Finland.
If I travel 20 minutes south, Finnish sounds different .
An hour north east and it is very different.
An hour east and different again.
An hour north and they speak almost only swedish.
Etc...
Im from Scania, southern Sweden. Our accent is called scanian, but in our relatively small region there are several very distinct accents. If you go back in history it would have been many many more, almost every town and village would be identifiable on their accents.
Actually some shops in Poland like Żabka are open on Sundays, but as far as I know owner must work then
There are workarounds, but it's how supposed to work. Still most of the time those workarounds can't be applied.
I'm impressed by your knowledge and even more so by your interest in the rest of the world, considering you're from Illinois where you just have America in all directions. Good work! Greetings from Stockholm
For the UK a good example of language and dialect differences is the word for "Bread Roll". There are at least 16 different acceptable terms for it depending on your location and quite often using the wrong one can lead to confusion. For example in West Yorkshire a "Bread Roll" is a "Teacake" however say that in Scotland and the waiter would bring you a biscuit with a marshmallow topping.
In Leeds a teacake is bread cake according to our lass
In German it's the Word of the Last hard slice at the end of a loaf of bread... It can bei for example Kanten, Knierfte, Knübbele or Randl depending of the Region you live in.
@@geoffpriestley7310 It even depends what part of West Yorkshire - as it does here in East Yorkshire! To me, it's a breadcake (a teacake being like a breadcake but with currants in it!😜), but as a young kid in Suffolk I knew it as a bap?
The majority of my own family, my ex-husband and both sides of his family are all Geordies (from Northumberland), but don't ask me what the same thing's called up there these days as whenever I go visit, I still can't understand half of what anybody's saying..!😅
In Waterford, Ireland, a bread roll is a blaa
In Norwegian we have like 10 different ways just to say the word I. We have very distinct dialekts because we were separated by mountains
The little rivalries in europe are the best.
"In Germany, you arrive on time. In Austria, you arrive… eventually, but with a good story."
Everyone has some banter for their neighbours or about the country capital.
The neighbourly banter is great! Like how Danish people call us from Norway montain-apes and we say danish people talk with a potato in their throat 😊
Unless you travel by train in germany. Then you might not even arrive at all.
Yes, here in Estonia we are shure, that our Neighbours in Latvia have not 5, but 6 toes on leg... We call them "kuuevarbalised" (six-toed) 😁
As a Swiss, German dual citizen I would never describe Germans as being punctual.
Just a curiosity about learning several languages. I am Portuguese, my daughter started learning English at 4 (its optional but i would say 80 to 90% of ppl do it), a second language is mandatory at age 10, normally English (but french might be an option in some schools), at 12 it is mandatory a 3rd language, most commonly french, but could be Spanish or Mandarin (this last is getting very popular nowadays) by default you have English all the way from basic school till university
I am in Ireland, born and raised. We speak English (in my county at least), we learned Irish and I learned French and a little German in secondary school (high school). We got to choose the 3rd language we learned but we HAD to learn a 3rd one (only got to choose what one). German, French and either Italian or Spanish were the most available 3rd languages but it depended on where you went to school. If you went to school in Dublin or maybe Cork or Limerick there may have been other languages to choose from. This was back in the 80's and 90's so there are different choices now and more availability of languages to choose from.
Just be careful not to take what she is saying in that video as gospel. I have watched that video about a year ago and I do not agree with some of the things she said and portraits as facts there.
For example, the thing about German is wrong. Everybody in Germany and Austria is able to speak "high German", and even if they speak in dialect we still mostly are able to understand each other just fine. There are a few exceptions, mostly Switzerland and the most-Western state of Austria, their dialects are very difficult to understand. But apart from that it's maybe more comparable to British English vs. American English. They sound different, they may have different words for some of the same things, but overall they understand each other just fine. Regarding the overall language, culture, etc. Bavaria (the south-eastern most state of Germany) is quite close to Austria, even moreso than to the other German states.
The AC and heatwave thing is also wrong, many public buildings, public transport, etc. has AC by now and the heatwave may be two weeks in Latvia, but it's sometimes two months in central European countries.
Regarding learning languages, it all depends on what the dominant language in your area is. For example, as a German-speaking native the first foreign language we learn is *always* English. You might have to learn other foreign languages down the line in your school career, such as French, for example, but learning a language of an adjacent country is probably only a thing if your language is not a dominant one in your region, i.e. like people in the Netherlands learn German. She is projecting a lot in her video, I think I already mentioned that :D.
Re "........ maybe more comparable to British English vs. American English" that actually would be more accurate if you left it as just "....... maybe more comparable to British English" as whilst we can all read written English the same cannot be said about the spoken language, which varies hugely across the length and breadth of the tiny area of the UK, due to the large number of distinct dialects and accents, whilst we can often get the gist of a conversation the subtleties are completely lost, or people use a different version of English, closer to received pronunciation than their local dialect.
Nope. I have to disagree with you there. Yes, people are able to speak "high german" as the universal german language. But think about the little towns and villages and think about the older generation - two 60+ year olds from idk, Waldshut in Germany (southwest corner with a strong accent bordering swiss) and Emden in East Frisia will VERY likely have some sort of problems understanding eachother when high german for themselves is noticabley a "foreign language". And if they just speak their dialect - no chance at all. I heard once people from "Vogelsberg, Hessen" talk in their dialect and it was almost impossible to understand anything - and I am living only ~300km away. When people really choose to speak "their" dialect and not some high german that is influenced by their regional dialect - you are in for a hard treat.
And yes, NOW the heatwaves can be up to 2 months. But 20, 30 years ago 30°C+ was quite rare! You had that a few weeks in August. Most buildings are older than that or built with a different climate model.
And no, the first foreign language we learn is NOT always english! I border France, we could choose between English, Latin and French. From grade 5-7 it was french for me, then english, for the ones that had begun with english it was the other way around. The class that chose Latin it was English in grade 7 and French in grade 9. (All at the "Gymnasium", where usually faster learning pupils were sent to). So yes, afaik the border regions of germany can learn their neighbouring countries´ language as a 1st language.
As a German who moved to Austria - it is not always possible to understand the Austrians if they dont make the effort - and I am not talking about Vorarlbergerisch. In Vienna, yes, but even starting from Upper Austria, it starts to become difficult if they talk in dialect.
And also, English is not ALWAYS the first foreign langauge you learn. There are enough schools that start with French or Latin.
@@xyincognito I learned in the 90s and even then we started with English in *elementary school* . I have friends with small kids that are going to school now and I have yet to hear about or know anyone who did not have the 2nd language learning at school being English. Not teaching English as the first foreign language in school is irresponsible.
About the learning... in Switzerland, german part, we learn french first, then english
About Sundays, in Portugal restaurants are all open on Sundays. We enjoy eating out, and the weekend is always appealing for that. Usually restaurants will be closed on Mondays for staff rest. Shopping malls and all their stores are open on Sundays, too. What usually closes is small/street commerce and services (these are closed on Saturdays, too).
"Are americans really that loud?"
From purely observing all the people around me in public (university/tourist town, so many foreigners) it goes like this (very broadly)
Loudest noise imaginable
- Black people
- Russians
- Americans
- Southern Europeans
- Brits
- Eastern Europeans
- Asians (not loud, but often talk a lot amongst themselves)
- Everyone else
- Scandinavians
Absolute silence
- Balts (they will actively make any place more quiet, unless they are drunk)
I can confirm your list. I am missing Middle East and South American though.
I would put Middle East between US and South Europe.
South Americans above Brits.
add chinese to this list :)
Coming from any town in Spain to France- oh! so quiet. Sitting in any Polish restaurant/cafe- they almost whisper. :)
The ruzzians stopped being loud a couple of years ago, so I would put brits in that second place.
@@anotherscandinavian only for a few months. They're back at full volume.
i live in The Hague, which has an unique dutch dialect/accent from the rest of the country. using different words, different expressions, having different names for things.
the same is true for most other dutch cities and regions.
but even within the city you could tell from what area or even what specific street someone was from, from the words and expressions they used.
so it's not weird to me at all that there are so many different languages in the whole continent
I am a proud Yorkshireman and I went to work Dahn Sarth( Down South) and one of my new colleagues was also from Up North, he was a Liverpudlian and you would expect 2 Northerners who were divided geographicaly by about 100 miles to be able to understand each other, but NOOO! my boss had to translate for at least a month as she was also originally from Liverpool and had employed some of my friends previously so had got to grip with my type of Yorkshire dialect (Which is one of at least four distinct types existing from the Shires themselves. i.e. N,S,E and W ). If you drive about 1 hour from York and go into a local pub you would be hard pressed to understand all the different dialects and now more commonly languages you would encounter. Obviously this is also very common in Europe as well.
You can throw Lancashire in with that - apparently no one understands the Lancashire accent.
I like your perspective on things! Love watching your videos :)
Also in tiny Denmark there are 80+ dialects ..... and some of them I really dont understand and you tell which town people are from by the way they speak.
Yes! In Norway, with our relatively small population, we have over 1300 different dialects.
Czech here: its not just that we like to be called central europe, we are. That may be the reason😅even when we are not talking about pure geographic, economically and in most ways we are as close to the western countries as to those on east. Plus we dont wanna be included with Russia. But slavic, yes. btw those czech crowns that were mentioned, those are the currency later shown as polish currency.
Great channel by the way, smart open minded guy thats cool (especially when from the US🤔)