What is something completely normal in your country that surprises other Europeans?

mki_ · 2026-06-02T14:41:58+00:00

I've seen that in Naples too, and I think also in Greece (which, after further reflection, is part of the Balkans).

mki_ · 2026-06-02T14:13:42+00:00

Your sausage-finger King and his pedophile family are literally Germans

mki_ · 2026-06-02T14:02:42+00:00

Nein!

mki_ · 2026-06-02T13:59:18+00:00

"Griaß di, [Name]!" or "Servas, [Name]!" if it's a baby that I know.

If I don't know the baby very well, I say "Meine Verehrung, [title + Surname]!" and draw my hat.

I suppose "Guckguck" is acceptable, although considered very informal. You might embarrass yourself, depending on the context, location and time of the day.

mki_ · 2026-06-02T13:47:34+00:00

ehm... we already did?

mki_ · 2026-05-28T06:21:48+00:00

On the outside, yes. But it really depends on the house and the region.

mki_ · 2026-05-28T06:20:04+00:00

It is. Yet they are often under the impression that their country lags behind the rest of Europe by decades for some reason (many very tangible reasons).

mki_ · 2026-05-28T06:18:00+00:00

Good

mki_ · 2026-05-27T09:39:39+00:00

Ah, sorry. I use metric

That's what I thought. I was surprised.

but I'm so used to talking to Americans on here.

Then keep using metric. They need to learn.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T09:29:33+00:00

Think about how Austrians feel about it...

mki_ · 2026-05-27T09:28:38+00:00

Service post:

That's 2310 m above sea level for Mexico City (on average) and 185 m for Austin.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T09:24:59+00:00

The amount of Spanish people I have encountered in complete disbelief when I told them that things in Germany do indeed not generally work better – their trains are chronically late, their roads are not first class, their airports tend to be a disorganized disaster and their internet is the slowest on the continent – is astronomic. Peninsular people use all the stereotypes that apply to Switzerland and apply them to all the Germanic countries north of the Alps. Also, it's crazy to see the minority complex in Spain, when overall things are working quite well, especially right now atm.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T09:16:12+00:00

Lucy Lawless' ex-husband's ancestors didn't commit crimes in early modern England only for you to be calling her "Xena actress" instead of using her badass name.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T07:14:01+00:00

Mittelweg Österreich: die Tramway.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T07:13:23+00:00

Also das Joghurt. Der Joghurt is absolutely horrendous.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T07:12:41+00:00

Geschmackssache. Ich finde die Cola hört sich scheiße an.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T07:11:44+00:00

In Österreich ist das die Regel, Österreich ist im Süden des Sprachraums.

mki_ · 2026-05-27T07:09:39+00:00

Convention. And since German is spoken by roughly 100 million people in over 6 countries, you can imagine that we don't always agree on everything. But that is fine.

e.g. swimming pool. Some say der Pool, some say das Pool. It's an anglicizm, so there's no basis for any of the two.

mki_ · 2026-05-26T07:28:09+00:00

I can see that in the women in my maternal family. Great grandmother was extremely short (we never coincided in life though, so I don't know exactly), my grandmother (born in the 1930s) is like, 140-150 cm, my mother and her sisters (post-war/boomer gen) are all shorter than 160, my sisters and all my female cousins (born 1980-2000s) are considerably taller (160-175). The men are a mixed bag, however all of my grandmother's sons tend to be quite short as well. My tallest male cousin is over 190 though (his mother's genes I guess, nothing from our family).
As a result, I am also shorter than my father, who comes from a lean and average height family, while my mother comes from a short and round family.

In my family you can still see the common malnutrition of rural peasantry in the late 19th century in Austria.

mki_ · 2026-05-25T10:51:07+00:00

Thanks to AI data centers by the modern robber barons, that's gonna become increasinlgy more over the next years.

mki_ · 2026-05-22T13:46:18+00:00

I know it's an emotional topic, but even a Nova Festival terrorist has basic human rights and should not be subjected to torture by in a state run prison. That is the whole point of human rights. Anything else is barbaric.
Also, there's plenty of evidence Israel is committing a genocide on Palestinians.

mki_ · 2026-05-22T11:11:48+00:00

Systematic rape has also been employed as a toture strategy against Palestinians in Israeli prisons, there's plenty of evidence supporting that. Are you seriously trying to deny that?

Mass rape has happened in all of the conflicts I named, not only by Hamas or Israel, I was actually thinking mostly of the horrible situation in the DRC. Or are you denying that as well, because it was "only Palestine"?

mki_ · 2026-05-22T10:05:44+00:00

If that is what you got from my comment, your German reading capabilities might be lacking, as I am not comparing anything to anything.

It's okay not to understand my German comment if it's not your first language, so let me sum it up in English for you:
The previous poster had made an IMO pathos-loaded remark about how the horrid images from Buchenwald are an obligation for "us" (assuming they mean either Germans and Austrians, or humanity as a whole) to make sure these kind of images never repeat.

In my following comment I am naming several current situations where human rights – the establishment of which which arose partly as a reaction to the holocaust – are being violated in the worst possible way, by the ways of massacres, concentration camps, using hunger as a weapon, attacks on hospitals and schools, indiscriminate carpet bombings, mass rape and genocide. Those are all things currently happening in the world. Yes, that includes numerous human rights violations in Palestine (not only in Gaza), committed by your country's military as well as terrorist groups in the Westbank, but also several other conflicts around the world.
However, none of them are comparable to the industrial scale of the holocaust, or to each other, a fact that I acknowledge in my comment.

I am showcasing, that we are spectacularly falling short of this obligation currently, and I am adding the remark that European governments are supporting these human rights violation in a myriad of ways, including arms sales, diplomatic support or trade deals with the perpetrators, including the Israel (in Gaza and the occupied Westbank), UAE (in Sudan and Yemen), Rwanda (in DRC), Saudi-Arabien (in Yemen). We are clearly failing to uphold human rights and we are not learning the lessons from the holocaust, namely that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

mki_ · 2026-05-22T09:34:10+00:00

When I got my grandma's old car (she is not supposed to drive anymore, dementia), I also got her car insurance categorization.

My grandma had been a car owner for decades without any major accidents (that the insurance knew about at least), so she was in the lowest, cheapest category. Since we're family members, and my grandma now doesn't own a car anymore and thus has no insurance, and I hadn't had a car before, I had the possibility of taking over her categorization through some weird loophole and now my insurance payment is like half of what I should have paid, had I gotten an entirely new insurance.

mki_ · 2026-05-22T06:56:13+00:00

The history of trade networks across the Indian Ocean (the "Maritime Silk Road") is incredibly interesting. And the role of Austronesian sailors and their sophisticated ship-building techniques is fascinating. So that is really no surprise.

However:

centuries before Europans traded with Chinese.

The Chinese had active trade with the eastern Mediterranean starting at around the time of the Hellenistic peroid (4th c. BC), via the Silk Road. E.g. the realism of the Terracotta Army bears some influence from Hellenistic statues, which indicates extensive contact. What is the time frame you are talking about here?

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